Free Scorpion Shards by Neal Shusterman Page B

have been ugly just to spite her. When she got drunk, she would tell me things like how because of my face, I’d spend my whole life alone and unhappy.”
    â€œLike her?”
    â€œLike her.”
    â€œSounds like she got on the inside what you got on the outside,” said Winston. “I’d rather be you than her.”
    â€œI’d rather be neither of us,” said Tory. “I’d rather be a prom queen from the right family instead of a . . . a gargoyle.”
    â€œYou ain’t no gargoyle,” said Winston. “Gargoyles got big red eyes and ugly teeth, and skin like snakes.”
    â€œI am so a gargoyle. I smell like one—my skin peels like one. One of these days my face’ll probably start turning greentoo.” Winston looked at her battle-scarred face, and she looked away, not wanting him to look at it anymore.
    â€œYou Baptists got a prayer for ugly people?” she asked.
    â€œWe got a prayer for everything,” said Winston. But try as he might, he couldn’t think of a prayer for the ugly.
    T WO HUNDRED MILES WAY , Indianapolis was pelted by heavy rain—but the rain that was falling inside Michael “Lips” Lipranski’s soul seemed even worse than the rain outside. The storm raging inside him was full of acid rain, and it burned, filling him with the familiar feeling he could never make go away. He couldn’t talk about that, could he? There are some things you don’t talk about, he thought, as he lay uncomfortably in the van, which was parked in a back alley. There are some things that are just too secret, too personal, so you just never talk about them. Ever.
    The trip from Montauk had been torture. The drenched roads all seemed the same—back roads mostly, because they knew they’d be harder to find if they traveled the back roads. Right now, Michael couldn’t bear the thought of another road.
    Beside him, Lourdes babbled on about a dream she had the night before, about a gray rainbow—whatever that meant. She was cramped and uncomfortable—none of the van’s seats were wide enough for her. When she finally realized that Michael wasn’t listening, she turned to him and asked, “How do you feel?”
    â€œYou know how I feel,” said Michael, adjusting his uncomfortably tight pants. “I feel like I always feel.”
    â€œYou know, you’re not the only guy to feel horny all the time,” Lourdes said.
    Michael shifted uneasily. “Yes I am,” he answered. “I’m theonly one who feels it this bad. The only one in the world.”
    â€œMaybe not.”
    â€œYeah, sure. And maybe you’re not really fat—you just wear the wrong clothes.”
    Michael regarded the ceiling of the van above him, listening to the clattering of the rain.
    â€œI got a brother,” said Lourdes, “who always had girls on the brain, too.”
    Michael let out a bitter laugh. If girls on the brain were his problem, then there were thousands of them in there, all with jackhammers.
    â€œWhenever he got the girl crazies,” continued Lourdes, “he’d go off into the bathroom. When he came out a few minutes later, he didn’t feel that way no more. He thought we didn’t know what he was up to, but we did. We just didn’t say.”
    Michael cleared his throat. He just kept looking up at the spots in the roof-lining.
    â€œI do that, too,” said Michael. “I do it a lot.” Hearing the words come out of his mouth made tears come to his eyes—but Lourdes didn’t laugh at him. She just listened.
    â€œMy brother—I’ll bet he thought he was the only person in the world to do that. I’ll bet he hated himself for it.”
    Michael felt his whole body react to his tears. His throat closed up, his feet felt even colder, his fingers felt weak. Above him, the clattering sound of the rain grew