A Shred of Truth Read Online Free PDF

wonder you’re on edge,” Anna said, rejoining the conversation.
    “And I’m telling you, Professor Bones has it in for me.”
    Anna frowned. “Bones?”
    “Our substitute,” Diesel said. “The guy’s drier than day-old grits. He’s got these narrow shoulders and a hollow face and wears tortoise-shell glasses that make his eyes bug out.”
    “But please tell me you don’t call him that to his face.”
    “ ’Course not. Only when his back’s turned.”
    “Well then. Spoken like a true Southerner.”
    “I’m learning.”
    “Professor Boniface Newmann,” I explained to Anna. “That’s his real name.”
    “Oh my. Parents can be so cruel.”
    Diesel guffawed. “Tell me about it.”
    “Okay, boys, here’s one for you.” Anna started stacking clean mugs. “True or false: daddy-longlegs are the world’s most poisonous spiders?”
    “True,” Diesel jumped in. “But their fangs are too small to inject the poison.”
    “You agree, Aramis?”
    “Nope. That one’s a myth.”
    She grinned. “A myth it is.”
    “Ahh.” I pointed at Diesel. “Now who’s slipping?”
    “I swear I read about that somewhere.”
    “Heard it from the ‘friend of a friend,’ huh?” I wagged my head. “That’s why they call them FOAFs. Don’t you listen in class? Mix in a few lies with a shred of truth, and these things slip right into our culture’s collective database.”
    “Surely there are ways of checking these things,” Anna probed.
    “Of course,” I said. “There are a few debunking sites, but most people are lazy. You ever get one of those chain e-mails from exiled Nigerian royalty asking for money? People still think the Mormons own Coca-Cola.”
    Diesel yawned. “I never believed that, not even as a kid.”
    “C’mon.”
    “I didn’t. You can ask my mother.”
    The door chimed as two businesswomen entered, and I smiled to welcome them. In unison, they each raised a finger to silence me while they finished their cell-phone conversations. My smile started to cramp.
    “Go on.” Anna nudged me. “I’ll take it from here.”
    “You sure?”
    “Hon, do I look helpless to you? I know you have paperwork. Go, go.”
    Before slipping back through Black’s kitchen, I turned to Diesel. “You need anything, I’ll be in my office.”
    “Your broom closet, you mean.”
    “The very one.”
    We both laughed. I moved on past the freezer and storage shelves.
    “Don’t forget, boss. Tomorrow at Sara’s. We’re counting on you.”
    “You know,” I said, “growing up I used to get a beating for anything lower than a B.”
    “Do any good?”
    “Dropped out my junior year of high school. Had to go back and earn my GED.”
    “Well, there you go.” Diesel’s eyes turned dark. “It would have been worth trying, just to see the look on my dad’s face. School is like life and death to him.”
    His words caused images to churn in my head: the charred body under the overpass, a sliced Stetson, a pair of letters carved in my brother’s skin.
    I cracked my knuckles and marched off.
    Nothing could keep me from making that appointment today at four. This AX character had no idea of the trouble he’d called down upon himself. I’d be there, locked and loaded, to show him a little urban legend of my own. Soon he would be in my arena.

5
    T ime to zero in. Confined by brick walls and the stale tennis-shoe odor of my back-room, broom-closet office, I plopped onto a three-legged stool. A dented file cabinet in the corner held hard copies of till reports and credit-card receipts. A safe sat beside the computer tower beneath my metal desk, while on top, stacks of Jack London hardcovers served as the base for my monitor.
    Here’s the thing: I’ll read the classics someday, but for now I’ve got spreadsheets and bills to worry about.
    At this rate, I’ll be a toothless wonder by the time I finish
White Fang
.
    I waited for the ancient computer to boot up. Clicks and whirs preceded the monitor’s gradual