On My Honor Read Online Free PDF Page A

where her boyfriend had disappeared.
    Joel and the girl stood side by side, waiting. Joel wondered for a moment if he should be back in the water looking, too, but the memory of the current pulling at him, holding him down, turned his legs to lead. He couldn't move toward the river again. The boy was going to find Tony, anyway. Joel was certain of it.
    The first time the boy surfaced, Joel called out excitedly..."Tony!" But the teenager's hands were empty, and Joel stifled a second, more forlorn cry.
    "The current probably took him that way," Joel called, pointing toward the bridge, and the boy nodded and ducked under again, swimming farther out this time and emerging downriver ten or fifteen feet.
    He stayed with it, turning in every direction, diving again and again until his chest heaved and he staggered when he stood. His girl friend paced on the bank, cracking her gum steadily. "Be careful. Be careful," she said occasionally, more to the surrounding air than to her friend.
    "You won't find anything there," she called desperately when he swam almost to the middle of the river once. "He wouldn't have gone that far out."
    "But what if he did?" Joel demanded, and the girl didn't answer. She looked as though she were about to cry.
    Joel stood on the bank and called helpful directions, but finally, despite Joel's encouraging suggestion to try "just a bit farther down," the boy began wading toward shore. His head was lowered so the water sheeting off his hair wouldn't drip into his eyes.
    "You aren't quitting, are you?" Joel asked, the knowledge that he had quit already lying heavily in his gut.
    "Yeah," the boy gasped, picking up his shirt and wiping his face with it. "I'm quitting."
    "But you can't," Joel wailed. "You just can't!"
    The boy shrugged. He spoke between deep, quavering breaths. "Look ... do you know ... how long ... it takes somebody ... to drown?"
    Joel didn't answer. He hadn't thought about it. Besides, he didn't want to know.
    "About five minutes, I'd say." The boy bent over, resting his hands on his knees. "About five lousy minutes!" More deep breaths. "Maybe even less."
    Joel turned away, walked along the bank a few feet, but the boy's voice followed him.
    The boy was beginning to breathe more normally now, and the words came out in larger clumps. "And how long was it before you even got me down here? Ten minutes? Fifteen?"
    Joel couldn't respond.
    "And do you know," the boy went on, straightening up slowly, "how hard it is to find anything in a river like this ... how fast the current would pull somebody along? Maybe next week a body'11 wash up at one of the dams ... or next month."
    "We're not looking for a body," Joel said, turning back fiercely. "It's Tony we're looking for!"
    The boy used his shirt to shear the water off his chest and arms. He shook his head. "Sorry, kid," he said.
    Joel went rigid. What was this guy saying? Sorry? What was he sorry about? He didn't even know Tony.
    "Dumb kids," the boy muttered as he tugged on his jeans. "You shouldn't have been swimming in the river in the first place. You both should have known better. Didn't anybody ever tell you how dangerous rivers are?" He stuffed his feet into his shoes, wrung his wet shirt out. "Well," he said, "you'd better finish getting dressed and come with me."
    Now it was Joel who was beginning to have trouble breathing. "Where are you going?" he asked.
    "To the police station." The boy's voice was harsh, angry, as if he blamed Joel for what had happened. "When somebody drowns, you've got to report it to the police."
    When somebody drowns. The words reverberated through Joel's skull like a scream. But he only repeated, dully, "The police," and stared at his own feet. What would the police say? They would want to know what Joel and Tony had been doing in the river in the first place. They would want to know what Joel had done to lose his friend that way.
    Maybe he could call his dad at work first ... before he went to the police station.