Читать книгу Clash of the Worlds - Ned Vizzini - Страница 8

Later that night, Eleanor tossed and turned in her tiny bed inside her tiny room that she shared with Cordelia in the tiny apartment they had moved into. Nightmares haunted her sleep. Nightmares of Fat Jagger fighting off massive great white sharks in the dark waters of the San Francisco Bay. Nightmares of Fat Jagger getting caught up in a fishing net and drowning. Nightmares of Fat Jagger getting discovered and then hunted by men with giant harpoons in whaling ships. And in all her nightmares, there was nothing she could do to help him.

Brendan, however, was not even trying to sleep.

He was sitting at the small desk in his room with his head in his hands, thinking about having to go back to his old school and seeing all of his old friends and teachers. They would all ask him why he had to transfer out of private school and come back. He’d have to tell them the truth. That his dad gambled away all their money and they got kicked out of their home. It’d be especially hard to face them after the way he’d left – admittedly (now) a little too cocky over how much better his new private school was going to be “than this dump”.

This reality somehow filled Brendan with more fear than most of the crazy book adventures he had been on. He realised death was almost easier to face than total humiliation – which was a startling and sobering revelation.

Brendan distracted himself by switching on the fifty-five-inch TV that he’d brought with him from his not-quite-a-man cave in the Kristoff House attic. They could take away his cool attic bedroom and his old school and the money and his chauffeur (which was probably his favourite part of their old life). But nobody was getting their hands on the TV he bought with some of the money Eleanor had wished for using The Book of Doom and Desire. He and the TV had been through a lot together already, including the Giants’ most recent World Series victory. He’d been so excited on the final out, that he almost accidentally threw his half-full can of soda right through her beautiful and flawless screen.

Brendan flipped through the channels, looking for the reruns of Family Guy or South Park that always seemed to be on late at night. He was just about ready to settle on ESPN as a consolation, when a headline on a news channel caught his eye. For a second, he figured maybe he was watching a parody news show, because there was no way the headline could be true.

But the channel was CNN. The news story Brendan watched play out on-screen was most definitely real. And it caused him to literally fall out of his bedroom chair and land on the floor with a sickening thud.