"Brantingham-OldFreedom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brantingham Juleen)

in a little glade floored by a cracked concrete slab and ringed by elderberry
bushes. The boy fell down beside me, rolling around laughing and holding his
sides.

"Kah-crunch, squish!" I choked out, still roaring.

We laughed some more and then a little more and then the laughter sort of
trickled away. The boy was so close I could smell his sweat, see the dirt ground
into his pores and the ribs sticking through the tatters of his shirt. No way of
telling whether he was one of the ones abandoned and forgotten when his folks
found the VR world more interesting than the real one or whether he was like me,
seeing what was happening and just deciding to go off on his own.

Not that it mattered. He wasn't anything to me.

I edged one way and the boy edged the other, both of us looking at each other
slantwise. It had been twenty years since I'd been that close to another human
soul and that experience hadn't been the kind to make me comfortable with this
one.

"Guess I better be getting home," I said, feeling sadness settle as heavy as if
that concrete slab had tipped up and fallen down on top of me.

Getting up, I accidentally lurched in the boy's direction. His eyes got wide and
he drew back, lifting his lip in a snarl like old Free had given me the first
time I saw him.

Old Free.

Freedom, my other half.

Gone.

Forever.

After a while I felt this touch on my shoulder. I couldn't make myself look up
but I could smell the boy's breath, sour like he'd had nothing but grass to eat.

"Mister," he said, all choked up. "Mister, don't think I want to be friends or
nothing, but I'd like to tell you about my dog. His name is Sam. He's the best
old dog . . ."

Before you know it, the two of us were crying on each other's shoulders and
laughing between the sobs and talking about Sam and Freedom and where they might
be, with chasing and bitches and wild smells and rolling in the grass forever.