Bank Job Read Online Free PDF Page B

again.
    Billy’s usually sleepy face was flushed with excitement. He turned away from Tom and said to me, “You walk down the street, all calm like, to where Tom is waiting.”
    I said, “But Tom…”
    â€œDon’t worry. Tom will change his mind. He won’t let us down. As I was saying, you slip Tom the bag. We all head for the SkyTrain separately, taking our time and being sure to take different SkyTrains. We don’t want anyone catching us together. It’ll work. It’s got to.”
    Billy’s a pirate at heart, I’m sure of it. He’s a buccaneer. No one but us, his best friends, would ever guess from his sleepy appearance that deep inside he longed so much for adventure, excitement and danger.
    I swallowed. “If it means keeping all four of us together,” I said, “I’m game.” We knocked fists.
    â€œI knew I could count on you, Nails.” Billy smiled his gleaming smile and my stomach did a flip.
    Amiable just doesn’t cut it. Billy’s perfect, pure and simple.
    We headed back to the house. Tom was quiet. Billy is big, at least six feet tall with broad shoulders. He sort of rolled as he walked. Way cool.
    â€œYou know what?” I told him. “From the back you even look like a bank robber. You’re like the bank robber in that old black-and-white western we saw, I forget his name…”
    He turned around and grinned. “Billy the Kid.”
    â€œThat’s the one.”
    Billy Galloway was a kid on life’s skateboard, having himself a good time.
    â€œWere you thinking of some kind of disguise?” I asked. His face with its freckled nose and ruddy cheeks looked too young for a bank robber. It wasn’t just the freckles and cheeks, it was something else. Maybe the long curly hair that hardly ever saw a comb, or maybe the happy twinkle in his blue eyes.
    Billy said, “Disguise? Fake mustache maybe?”
    â€œWhat about some glasses with black frames? I got a pair from Value Village. I thought they’d make me look older, but they’re too big for me.”
    Billy nodded. “Fake mustache, glasses, maybe a cap to hide my hair. That should do it.”
    Tom didn’t say anything. Like the daffodils at the park the week before, he shook his head in worried disbelief.

SIX
    We spent the rest of the weekend trying to persuade Tom to join the team. The thing was, except for us—me, Billy and Lisa, and the Hardys, of course— Tom was totally alone. Both his parents were dead, he had no other relatives. We were his only family, his only friends.
    Tom came to the Hardy house last September, a year or so after Billy and me. It was his first foster. He’s the same age as me but wasn’t in any of my classes at Moscrop Secondary. He was in the gifted program and I wasn’t. You had to look for me in the Learning Centre getting help with math.
    On Sunday night Lisa was in bed with a sore throat, so I hung out in the boys’ room. Billy and Tom were finishing their homework. I didn’t do homework. I was relaxing in their window seat, enjoying the romantic problems of Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey .
    Billy put down his book and stretched. “So I’ve got our first bank all picked out.”
    â€œI friggin’ told you,” said Tom, “I’m not robbing any bank.”
    â€œYou’d rather leave it to chance that you’ll be shipped off to some insane foster?” I asked. “You don’t know what they’re like, Tom. Some of them are really gruesome.”
    â€œYeah,” said Billy, “It’s crazy the kind of places they think it’s okay to send you.”
    â€œWhat do you know about crazy?” Tom asked.
    â€œMore than you, I bet,” said Billy.
    â€œI friggin’ doubt that,” said Tom. “I know all about crazy.”
    Tom rarely talked about his life before the Hardys’. Janice told us Tom’s