Summer of Seventeen Read Online Free PDF Page B

is there? You should do what I say!”
    “Not gonna happen.”
    Her expression rushed from shock to anger to something else that I didn’t recognize. I left the room before she lost it completely.
    I heard Ben’s voice as I trudged up the stairs. “Maybe you’re right about having kids—if they grow up like him.”
    I think he was trying to make a joke of it, but he should have known better.
    “I just can’t talk to Nicky anymore!” Julia ranted. “Whatever I say he bites my head off, or just looks right through me.”
    “He’s 17. Everyone’s like that at his age.”
    “I’m 23, Ben! I didn’t sign up for this. I’m not ‘mom’ material.”
    I stopped to listen to the rest.
    “You’re doing a great job,” Ben said, and I wished I could have laughed out loud. “He’ll come around.”
    “He missed so much school last semester. I never knew where he was. His grades are slipping. If he doesn’t make some effort, he won’t even get through high school let alone college.”
    Ben’s voice was even. “College isn’t for everyone. There’s always work for a plumber. I could ask my boss to take him on as an apprentice when he’s 18—although Nick would have to complete his GED. But it’s good money.”
    “I don’t know what to do with him.” Her voice dropped, and I strained to hear her. “Maybe he’d be better off in a foster home. It would only be for a year—just while he finished High School.”
    Sweat broke out all over me and my heart lurched. I’d always wondered, but now I knew.
    I yanked open my bedroom door, letting it bang into the wall, then slammed it behind me. I fell face first onto the comforter, burying my head, muffling her voice that said everything.
    Ugly, angry thoughts bubbled rapidly, and I pounded the pillows, fury burning through me.
    We’d never gotten along. I’d always been in the way, the annoying younger brother, the mistake that should never have been born. She wanted to go off and live her boring life with boring Ben, play it safe. Fuck her. I didn’t need her.
    When the alarm went off on my phone half an hour later, I hadn’t slept for even a minute. A glance in the mirror showed red eyes with dark shadows underneath. I looked like hell. Felt it, too.
    I threw myself in the shower then dressed quickly in an old pair of boardshorts and ratty tee. I didn’t have time to make any breakfast, so I just grabbed a loaf of bread and shoved it in my backpack, along with a wrinkled apple and a bottle of water. I remembered my baseball cap at the last minute. The high pressure was still sitting over us, and it was going to be in the mid nineties today.
    I could already feel a trickle of sweat in my armpits and down my back as I skated to the Alfaros’ house. I hoped I’d get to see Yansi—something that would make this shitty day a little better.
    But Mr. Alfaro was waiting for me, his arms crossed, his face a hard, blank line.
    He didn’t say anything, just jerked his chin toward the truck. I went to open the passenger door, but he laid his hand on my arm and motioned at me to sit in back with the equipment.
    Great. I was so insignificant I didn’t even rate sitting in the truck’s cab.
    I tossed my backpack and skateboard in, then jumped on and slumped against the side of the truck. As he pulled away, I glanced up at the house’s windows and saw Yansi. She smiled and blew me a kiss.
    Suddenly, the day was a little brighter.
    By lunchtime, I had learned one essential truth: Mr. Alfaro was a fucking slave driver and wanted to kill me. Maybe that’s two truths, but I was too tired and pissed to think straight.
    I started by spreading about 20 wheelbarrows of lava rocks. After that, I lost count. Next, I crawled on my belly in dust and spider webs and shit under some lady’s deck, trying to find a leak in a pipe that fed her sprinkler system and fishpond, hoping like hell that there weren’t any snakes. Then Mr. Alfaro made me scoop green slime out of the same