Rainbow Road Read Online Free PDF Page B

half-dozen throw pilows onto her bed.
    “Good morning!” She smiled at Kyle. “How’d you sleep?”
    “I woke so early, I guess I’m pretty excited.”
    “I bet you are. I don’t suppose Nelson’s up yet. How about you and I have some breakfast?” Kyle recaled Nelson saying his mom wanted to talk to him. While Mrs. Glassman prepared eggs and turkey bacon, Kyle toasted muffins and poured their orange juice. At seven the radio alarm began blaring music upstairs, but the sound elicited no stirrings of life.
    “Nelson!” his mom shouted out the kitchen door.
    No response.
    She shook her head and sighed at her uneaten muffin.
    “You know …” Her eyebrows rose trustingly toward Kyle. “I’m only letting Nelson go on this trip because you’re going.” Kyle hadn’t realized that, but it didn’t surprise him. She’d often told him how glad she was that Nelson had him as a friend.
    “I know how responsible you are, Kyle. Promise me you’l look after him, okay?”
    “Oh, he’l be al right.” Kyle tried to sound confident, though in truth he worried about Nelson nearly as much as she did. Eager to end the conversation, he told her,
    “I’d better wake him up.”
    As Kyle entered Nelson’s bedroom, Atticus lifted his head off the bed to greet him, tail wagging to the radio. But Nelson stil lay beneath the sheets, oblivious to the music.
    “Hey, come on!” Kyle shook Nelson’s shoulder. “I told Jason we’d be there by now.” That evoked merely a grunt. Only after Kyle tickled Nelson’s ribs, yanked open the window blinds, pounded him with a pilow, and jumped on the bed did Nelson finaly sit up, shielding his eyes from the sunlight. “Al right already!” He blinked at the clock. “Why’d you let me sleep so late?”
    “Yeah, right. Hurry up!” Kyle handed Nelson the big mug of coffee he’d brought up and grabbed the phone to cal Jason.
    “Hey, wha’s up?” Jason asked. “Where are you?”
    “Trying to get her majesty out of bed.”
    “He’s not going to pul this al trip, is he?” Jason grumbled into the phone, so loud that Kyle puled the receiver away from his ear. “Tel him he’d better get his butt in gear.”
    “That’s royal butt,” Nelson corrected, carrying his coffee to the bathroom.
    Meanwhile Kyle crammed his sleeping bag and pilow into the packed car. Even at this early hour, the August sun had already begun shining ferociously, though rain was forecast. When Kyle returned upstairs, Nelson stood in front of the ful-length mirror, wearing Jeremy’s dark glasses and buttoning a baggy Hawaian shirt emblazoned with bright blue ocean waves and huge red hibiscus flowers.
    “And for the final touch …” Nelson capped his pink hair with a Panama hat Kyle recaled from Nelson’s junior-year English presentation on Truman Capote.
    “ Voilà! ”
    “You have everything?” Mrs. Glassman asked when at last Nelson made it out the door. “Your cel phone? The charger?” Kyle could see her eyes were misting up. She hugged Nelson, squeezing him so hard his hat fel off.
    “Mom!” he protested and climbed into the car.
    “Cal me tonight.” She leaned in the window as Nelson started backing out of the drive. “Kyle, make sure he cals me!”
    “I wil,” he told her as they waved and puled onto the street. The mention of Nelson’s cel phone charger reminded Kyle: “I think I forgot my toothbrush charger. I need to get it at my house.”
    That meant delaying their arrival at Jason’s. But watching Nelson say good-bye to his mom had made Kyle secretly glad for any excuse to see his own mom again.
    And it turned out he hadn’t forgotten his charger after al.
    “Keep us posted, okay?” His mom wrapped her arms around Kyle, and he breathed in the clean smel of her hair. “Cal us if anything happens.”

    “I wil. And you have Nelson’s cel phone number, right?”
    “Yes, sir,” his dad assured him and, after hugging him, pressed a fifty-dolar bil into his palm. “Here.