The Last Book in the Universe Read Online Free

canceled, or he might decide to let me live but ban me from the Crypts. “Disfavor,” they call it, which means you’re on the curb, fending for yourself without protection or shelter.
    Death or disfavor. I don’t know which is worse, and I don’t want to find out.

 
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    L ATER THAT DAY I go back to the stacks. My plan is, I’ll finish ripping off the old gummy and take his worthless papers, the junk he calls a book, and give it to Billy Bizmo, like I should have done in the first place. That’s my plan, but in the end it doesn’t work out that way.
    This time Little Face pops up as soon as he sees me coming. “Choxbar!” he chirps, holding out his dirt-colored hands.
    I go, “You know any other words? Huh?”
    He shakes his head. “Chox! Chox!”
    I get one out of my pouch and give it to him, and he gulps it down and holds out his hands again.
    â€œYou know the way,” I tell him. “Take me to Ryter. Then you get another choxbar.”
    So Little Face guides me through the rows of stackboxes like before, only this time the old gummy is standing in the door, waiting for me.
    â€œDon’t be surprised,” he says with a smile. “Bad news travels fast in this part of the world.”
    I don’t know why, but that hits me hard, the idea that I’m bad news. Of course it’s true — me coming back to the stacks is bad news, what else could it be? But he looks so hopeful, like he’s sure I’ll prove him wrong, that my plan to rip him off again goes right out the back of my head.
    Not today, I’m thinking, I’ll steal his stupid “book” some other day.
    â€œCome on in,” Ryter says, stepping to one side. “Make yourself at home.”
    He’s got this look in his watery old gray eyes, like he knows something I don’t, but for some reason that doesn’t make me mad. It just makes me want to know, too. But what, what is it he knows? He sees the look on my face and goes, “Something happened. Is it the Bangers? Have they canceled me?”
    I shake my head. “Not yet.”
    â€œNot yet,” he says, sounding real thoughtful. “Thank you for being honest with me. If you’d said ‘nothing to worry about’ I’d know it wasn’t the truth. And I always want to know the truth.”
    Right, I’m thinking, just like Billy Bizmo.
    Inside, it’s cool and shadowy and of course there’s no furniture, so I sit on the floor with my legs crossed. The old geez sits on the crate box he uses for a desk. The way light comes in, I can’t see his face, and his baggy, old one-piece makes him look thin and shapeless at the same time, like he’s lost inside his clothes.
    â€œI’ve been thinking about you,” Ryter says. “About your story.”
    â€œI told you,” I say. “I don’t have a story.”
    His head turns and now I can see his eyes, how big and old and kind they are. “What you’re really saying is, you don’t have a story worth telling,” he says. “Let me be the judge of that.”
    I want to stand up and shout that he’s got no right to tell me what I really mean — what makes him think he knows so much? — but instead I sit there and keep my mouth shut, maybe because underneath it all I know what he says is true.
    â€œStart at the beginning,” he suggests. “What’s the first thing you remember?”
    The first thing. That’s easy. The first thing is when I got my little sister, Bean. The thing about Bean is, she isn’t really my sister — we’re not blood — but I didn’t know that then, because I didn’t know that Kay and Charly weren’t my real mother and father. All of that came later, when I started to grow, but when Bean came along I was maybe four years old, and that’s the first thing I remember.
    This tiny, widgy little face wrapped