Puddle Jumping Read Online Free PDF Page A

introduce myself. He said I had to be polite.”
    It was then I realized just how hard this was going to be for him. He was so formal. So timid.
    “You’ve always been polite,” I whispered waiting for him to look up again. “Even when you were saving me from lightning.”
    His face shot up immediately at the memory and he blinked furiously. “You remember.”
    “Of course I remember. How could I forget? You saved my life.” His eyes had widened further. “Twice,” I reminded him.
    He smiled then. Just a small smile, but it was all I needed before he let out a long breath and looked at the floor again. “You remembered.”
    The silence took over then, and I won’t lie, it made me fidgety. So, I got my things from my locker and packed my backpack while he stood to the side, not saying a word. Finally, I had to break the tension.
    “I haven’t seen you in while.”
    His entire body language seemed to imply exactly how nervous he was. “Paint . . .” his mouth snapped closed and he looked down.
    “Paint? Your paintings?” It was like pulling teeth.
    His face grew solemn. “I’m only allowed to talk about painting three times today and I used my chances during first period.”
    Something in my heart, now that it was back in my chest, stung as I looked at him because he seemed to be so embarrassed. He wanted so badly to do what he was used to.
    I lifted my hand to touch him and then closed my fist by my side and looked up with my head tilted slightly. “I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”
    My mind was chanting, ‘Tell me, tell me, tell me.’ Selfishly, I wanted to hear him speak. I wanted to hear his passion over something he loved.
    It was, without a doubt, the best sentence to ever come out of my mouth in seventeen years.
    He talked. Oh my God, did he talk. And I just stood there like a fool, smiling at him as he rattled off all this information so fast and excitedly, using words I’d never heard someone my age use before.
    The bell rang and he was still going. I tried to cut him off, but there really was no stopping him once he’d started. I interjected long enough to get him to hand me his schedule in order to see about walking him to class. People may have walked by, staring at us, but I didn’t pay any attention. I was in his world now, wrapped up in his passion, making my chest feel so damn full I thought I would stop breathing.
    When he handed me his schedule, I felt tears rush to my eyes. You know that stinging in your nose right before the tears come? That’s what happened as I realized we were headed to the same class.
    AP English. Where our teacher had us all in alphabetical seating when we arrived. I watched Colton from my side of the room as he sat down and went stiff in the chest again, eyes forward and his mouth zipped shut.
    About halfway through the period, Mr. Mercer began listing the names of the books we would be reading. I’d barely been paying attention at all because I couldn’t stop staring at the back of Colton’s head and the way his hair curled up at the nape of his neck . . . freckles trailing into his shirt.
    I’d been so lost in my fantasy of actually touching them and wondering how it would feel to get my fingers wrapped around one wayward curl that I wasn’t at full attention to hear Colton suddenly speak out to tell our teacher he had already read a few of them.
    It was like an out of body experience watching his head raise a little higher as the words, low and steady just rushed from his lips.
    Mr. Mercer had given him one of those looks and whispered that Colton needed to please raise his hand in the future before interrupting class with an outburst.
    Poor Colton’s fists curled in his lap and he kept his head down for the rest of the class, but as soon as the bell rang, I pushed my way to the front and tapped Mr. Mercer on the shoulder, giving him my very best authoritative voice as I told him flat out that Colton’s mom had asked me sit with him during our