BooksBarbecue
Back The Art of Breathing Save as PDF
Contents ( 42)
  1. The Art of Breathing
  2. Part One: How We Became Who We Are
  3. Prologue: Or, Where the Kid Hears the Word of the Day
  4. 1. Where Tyson Learns to Breathe
  5. 2. Where Tyson Makes a Phone Call
  6. 3. Where Tyson Graduates and Bear Freaks Out
  7. 4. Where Tyson Says Good-Bye
  8. 5. Where Tyson Gets the Mail
  9. Part Two: Coming Home
  10. 6. Where Tyson Comes Home
  11. 7. Where Tyson Gives a History Lesson
  12. 8. Where Tyson Attends the Most Awkward Party Ever
  13. 9. Where Tyson Plans Attends a Protest
  14. 10. Where Tyson Gets Arrested
  15. 11. Where Tyson Gets His Ass Handed to Him
  16. 12. Where Tyson Writes Bad Poetry and Gawks at Frat Boys
  17. 13. Where Tyson Decides to Man the Fuck Up
  18. 14. Where Tyson Asks Some Questions
  19. 15. Where Tyson Remembers Theresa Jean Paquinn
  20. 16. Where Tyson Learns the Benefit of Therapy
  21. 17. Where Tyson Meets the Man Who Becomes Helena Handbasket
  22. 18. Where Tyson Gets Screwed at His Own Birthday Party (And Not in a Good Way)
  23. Part Three: Just Breathe
  24. 19. Where Tyson Goes to Helena Handbasket’s Sex Dungeon
  25. 20. Where Tyson Beholds the Awesome Wonder That Is Paul Auster
  26. 21. Where Tyson Receives Advice from the Six Sages
  27. 22. Where Tyson Makes a Phone Call
  28. 23. Where Tyson Hears the Inevitable
  29. 24. Where Tyson Meets His Match
  30. 25. Where Tyson Says Hello, Where Tyson Says Good-bye
  31. 26. Where Tyson Touches upon the Inevitable
  32. 27. Where Tyson Faces the Music
  33. 28. Where Tyson Breathes
  34. 29. Tyson And Dominic
  35. 30. The Art Of Breathing
  36. Epilogue: Or, Bear’s Perspective, As It Were (Yeah, He’s Gonna Freak)
  37. Author’s Note
  38. Excerpt
  39. Prologue: Or, Where Bear Answers the Door
  40. More from TJ Klune
  41. Readers love the Bear, Otter, and the Kid Chronicles by TJ Klune
  42. By TJ Klune

I’m gonna have to make it rain all up in here.

(Man, I really need to stop watching Maury Povich with Bear. It’s destroying my vocabulary.)

I look up, and for a moment, I don’t see anyone. I think maybe I’ve made a mistake and can get back to the ants when a movement across the street catches the corner of my eye. I look over and see him.

He’s huge. Damn you, genetics!

Some older boy is standing on the other side of the street, his shaggy dark hair falling around his face. He’s got big shoulders hidden under a plaid button-down shirt, the rolled-up sleeves showing the black hair on his arms. His eyebrows are epic, kind of bushy, and I know, I just know, he can do that thing that Otter can and arch one so it makes him look like a dastardly villain. I can’t do that and it sucks. He can’t be much more than fourteen or fifteen years old, but he looks like he’s been injected with bovine growth hormone, given his size. I almost want to run across the street and ask him if he’s been trapped at some secret government animal-testing facility that has been administering new serums on cattle to make their cutlets bigger and juicier, only to let him know that I could rescue him and take him to a farm where he can live out the rest of his days with a salt lick and all the grass he can eat. But Bear said I shouldn’t talk to strangers because they’d be scared of me. I always thought I was supposed to be afraid of them, but Bear said I would just end up talking them to death and that any nefarious purpose they might have had would become moot.

When Bear McKenna accuses you of talking too much, you know you have a problem.

Whatever.

So I wait and watch. So does he. He looks away for a moment, down the road, and then stares at his feet, which he shuffles back and forth, kicking a rock and a leaf. He’s trying not to look at me, but I catch him peeking from the hair that has fallen over his eyes. What a weirdo. I’m not going to have a staring contest across the street. I’m not even wearing my special Staring Contest Gloves, so… you know. There’s that.

I sigh and look back down at the sidewalk, trying to collect my thoughts, wondering if Otter or Bear will build me a mantel where I could put my first Pulitzer next to my Lifetime PETA Awesome Award for Services to the Greater Good of Our Animal Companions (this may not have been invented yet, but don’t worry; I’ve written PETA, like, four times asking for such an award to be created and to let me be the first recipient of the prestigious LPAAFSTTGGOOAC. My last letter ended up being fourteen pages. Single-spaced. With size ten Cordia font. I haven’t heard back yet. The “P” in PETA doesn’t stand for “punctual,” after all). I don’t think it would be too presumptuous for me to ask Bear and Otter for at least a shelf. I could start there before eventually asking them to move out of the Green Monstrosity and just let me use it for a trophy house. Heck, by then, Otter and Bear will be married and I’ll be superfamous and will buy them a house in some country that actually likes gay people. United States of America? More like United States of Extraordinary Injustice Against Certain Segments of the Population All Because Rednecks Are Scared of Butt Sex.