Free The Fading by Christopher Ransom Page A

all day, hiding from all those eyes. The blink, as he
     had come to think of it, came now and then, but he was safe at home and stopped worrying about it so much. At times it was
     like a private shame, taking him when he was alone. In the shower. When his mom was at work, masturbating to old copies of
Playboy
he’d stolen from his dad.
    Once, during that first year, he found himself so engrossed he did not even pause his reading when the hands holding
Deliverance
vanished and the warped paperback hung suspended over him, its pages turningthemselves, as if the Word was being handed down to him from a divine source, saturating his brain with poetic and terrifying
     survival images that seeped into his dreams, waking him only after the book fell on his belly, which had reappeared as he
     slumbered away the rainy afternoon. He was in love with books, the frail lives and unmasked adults inside, the adventure and
     wickedness and heroism (and the cruel costs of all these things).
    After he was hooked, her quizzes began. Sometimes Rebecca read the books in parallel, assigning him reports on topics she
     chose from the texts. He spent most of his twelfth year in biographies and, as a reward, crime novels. Aging boxers. Felons.
     Women who liked knives. Last year he’d trudged through a seemingly endless historical phase.
Shogun, Exodus
, and more Michener than any boy should have to endure. Sometimes he lay in bed and stared up at the book titles on his shelves
     and imagined them as courses he would never get to take at a real college, filling in the discussions and lectures with imaginary
     professors and midterms, moccasin-wearing classmates and cute rich girls of his own choosing. His geography and history and
     science were
Centennial, Hawaii, Poland, Space
. His friends were Malcolm X, The Old Man and that boy on the Sea, George and Lenny, the Animals on the Farm, and Charlie,
     the little girl who could start fires.
    Rebecca employed New Age weirdos to entice him into philosophy, which only left him tired and frustrated.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
, with its strangely inviting lavender cover, its quiet angry dad and troubled kid, was a puzzling exception. He read it twice
     and then carried it everywhere for a few months, dipping into its looping metaphysical passages while his mom dragged him
     around on her errands. Though he didn’t understand a lot of it, it made his brain hurt in a good way, serving as a sort of
     Jungle Gym for the mind, and gave him the idea to buy the Honda.
    Maybe it was being cooped up in his room for three years. Maybe it was puberty. Whatever the reason, he was now sick of books
     and wanted to be around real people. He’d seen a good deal of the world without hardly ever leaving the house. He craved experience.
    ‘How’s it going?’ his mom said, rummaging in her purse, cursing lost keys. She was always running late, forgetting something,
     coming back two or three times before the Corolla was safely away. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been much help lately.’
    ‘It’s fine. A little more math and I can take the GED and get it over with.’ He walked into the kitchen to look for some breakfast.
     ‘We’re out of waffles,’ he said.
    ‘I’ll go to the store tonight.’ She pulled on a dirty purple windbreaker one of her boyfriends had left behind and he didn’t
     understand why she kept wearing it. It was too big for her and made her look like the people they had seen in line for food
     stamps. ‘Anything else you need?’
    ‘Milk, cereal, bread, lunch meat, Cheetos, bacon, Rice-A-Roni, some steaks—’
    ‘Okay, Noel, I’m doing the best I can. Jesus.’
    He came out of the kitchen which, in their apartment off Kalmia, was only about four steps from the front door. ‘Do you need
     some money?’ he asked her.
    ‘No. Absolutely not.’
    ‘Right.’ He dug into his jeans and handed her two crumpled twenties he’d taken from the open cash register at the grocery