Josie and Jack Read Online Free PDF Page A

to flirt,” he said.
    I turned away.
    The nearest place to eat was a bar that served takeout sandwiches during the day, fat overstuffed things with coleslaw and French fries right there between the slices of bread. We drove to the bar in the clothes we’d slept in and ordered four of them, three fried chicken and one fish, and devoured them in the truck. There was mayonnaise and grease-soaked paper everywhere. I ate one chicken sandwich and half of the fish; Jack ate the rest. They were disgusting. They were wonderful. When we were done, we went back up the Hill and took showers. I washed my hair and brushed it until it gleamed.
    Then I put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, what I always wore during the summer. Jack took one look at me and marched me back into my bedroom, where he made me change into a different pair of shorts and a different T-shirt.
    “What’s the point?” I said.
    “The point,” he said, “is that the first time, you looked like you were wearing your brother’s old clothes. Now you don’t.”
    “I like my brother’s clothes.”
    “I like you in my clothes, but take my word for it. No, don’t braid your hair,” he said. “Leave it down.”
    “It’s too hot,” I complained, but I did as he said.
    This time, Jack made me go into the drugstore alone.
    If I was lucky, I thought, it would be the boy’s day off and I could just buy toothpaste and leave. But there he was, sitting at the counter with his hair in his eyes, looking bored. He was wearing a green cardigan sweater against the chill of the air conditioning, the kind that Raeburn sometimes wore in the fall.
    As soon as he saw me he jumped to his feet.
    “Toothpaste?” I said, managing to smile.
    “Aisle six,” he said. “One aisle down from the aspirin.”
    He remembered us, then. The smile eased into my face a bit.
    I walked to the aisle, chose a tube of toothpaste, and walked back. I could feel him again, watching me too closely. The scrutiny hadn’t grown any easier to deal with. The muscles in my legs still didn’t seem to remember which way to move.
    As he rang up the toothpaste, the boy said, shyly, “Your name is Jo?”
    “Josie,” I said. “Well, Josephine, but—” I shut my mouth fast, in case I was babbling. I kept my eyes wide and my hands away from my hair, and tried to pretend that nothing I said really mattered to him. It was like talking to Raeburn.
    “Oh,” he said. “I heard your brother call you Jo the last time you two were in here. I’m Kevin.”
    We stood for a minute. The drugstore was so quiet that I could hear the hum of the fluorescent lights above me. I was waiting for him to talk; maybe he was waiting for me.
    “Your brother drives a blue Ford,” he said. “I see you two together a lot.”
    “We are together a lot.”
    “But you don’t go to school.”
    I shrugged.
    “That must rock,” he said.
    “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been to school.”
    “Believe me, it rocks,” he said. “School’s a drag.”
    “That bad?” I said.
    “Yes,” he said. Now it was his turn to shrug. “Or—I don’t know. It’s getting better, because I’ve got two free periods this fall, plus the jazz band. Other than that,” he shook his head, “it pretty much sucks.”
    I tried to look sympathetic, but I had no idea what he was talking about. “How much time do you have left?”
    “Two years.”
    Behind him, through the store’s front window, I could see Jack’s golden head inside the truck, waiting for me. Waiting for me as I flirted with a high school boy, I thought, a little bewildered. Was I doing a good job? How was I supposed to know? It would be easier if there were a meter that you could look at, like the temperature gauge in the truck.
    Then Kevin said, “So what about you?”
    “What about me?” I asked and smiled as if I’d said something witty.
    Kevin smiled back and said, “What do you like to do?” His throat moved as he swallowed hard. “Do you like to go to the