County Line Road Read Online Free PDF Page A

despite himself. Her ID badge rested between her breasts. She never wore scrubs like other nurses, but always chose button-up blouses that she wore just snug enough to pull at the buttons provocatively. He knew she did it for attention, and it worked. He hated himself for noticing, but as Double A told him many times, we’re teenage boys; she ought to know better.
    “Want to see what?” he said. “The ball?”
    “No, the new shirt,” she said and stopped smiling. She walked up to him. “It’s in our room. You – you haven’t seen it or been in there, have you? Of course not. You’d never go in there.”
    “No,” Jimmy said. He waited, suspicious, one hand on the door.
    “I didn’t think so,” she said and smiled again.
    “I have to go,” he said. He shut the bathroom door and leaned back on it, relieved to get some privacy.
    She knocked on the door, making him jump.
    “Are you going to be home tonight?” Linda said. “I’m planning a great dinner.”
    “I’m going out,” he said and turned on the shower full blast to drown out anything else she might say.
    He peeked out the small bathroom window and saw a Blue Jay on a branch, staring right at him, as if it had been waiting for him. Jimmy shut the window.
    He undressed and got in the shower. Immediately he thought of that plaster cast. He hoped the running water would wash away the uneasy feeling still in his stomach. Then he realized he didn’t find the baseball in the closet. He’d completely forgotten about it once he saw that plaster cast. How could he forget, he wondered. What did she do with it? I still have a week to find it, he thought. He wished he was already in South Carolina.
    “I can’t wait to get out of here,” he muttered to himself.
    He turned his thoughts to the blond girl at the gas station, except now he imagined she was posing for a magazine spread, washing her car, a hose in her hand and the water running over her body, her white, tied-off shirt getting soaked and see through. The water trickled down her midriff to her frayed, cut-off denim short-shorts, the top button undone. He began to smile and rub the bar of soap on his body.

CHAPTER 6
    That night Double A admired himself in his bedroom mirror, smoothing down his new shirt, hoping Anna would like it. He combed his hair once more and gave up on it. He set his computer to sleep mode, put his latest gaming box on top of his childhood bookshelf of warlock and wizard stories, picked up his cars keys, and left.
    Allison leaned in and out of her bedroom closet, selecting then rejecting one item after another, tossing them behind her, piling her floor and bed with shirts, jeans and skirts.
    Her mother knocked on her door and asked, “Allison, what are you doing in there?”
    “Getting dressed for that party, remember? You wanted me to go out, so I am.”
    Jimmy slipped out the kitchen door when Linda went to the bathroom. He scaled the wall in his backyard, the short cut to Double A’s house. A stack of plastic milk crates piled against the wall formed steps. Jimmy swung himself over the wall easily and dropped down in the grass on the other side. He landed a few feet from a drive-up window of a fast food restaurant, surprising the cashier. Jimmy jogged around the drive-up lane, past the gas station and convenience store and headed up the street. He arrived at Double A’s just as Double A stuck the key in his Cutlass.
    “When you gonna’ get this thing painted?” Jimmy said.
    Double A jumped.
    “Where did you come from?’ Double A said. “Don’t jump out of the bushes like that. And shut up about my car. I don’t see you forking over any money for the paint job.”
    “A little touchy,” Jimmy said. “Relax. What are you so nervous about anyway?”
    “What if Anna isn’t there? Or what if she is?”
    “You think you got problems,” Jimmy said. “I didn’t find the baseball. I looked everywhere, even her closet. She almost caught me.”
    “Maybe I should