The Best Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

daylight between them, and freaking about her phone.
    â€œWhy would I steal your phone or anything you’ve got?” replied Lynette in her dangerous voice. “If you can’t keep track of your phone, maybe you’re not mature enough to have it. Maybe your mother should cancel your contract.”
    Natalie seethed.
    â€œBut you can search me,” Lynette said. “Thoughit’s only fair to warn you, if you lay one finger on me, I’ll break both your arms.”
    I dragged her away. The first bell was about to ring. “Thanks,” Lynette mumbled. “You don’t have a plan. When did you ever have a plan? But thanks. I didn’t leave any marks on her. I know better. But I
wanted
to stomp her.”
    â€œOh, well,” I said. “Who doesn’t?”
    Back there behind us, Natalie screamed, “And I still hate your hair!”
    She’d pulled some of it out. The rest stood up like a big orange dandelion around Lynette’s head.
    â€œRetract?” I said to her.
    â€œShe knows the word. I suppose you want to know what the fight was about.”
    I was interested.
    â€œWhat I tried to make her take back was true.” Lynette swiped one of her eyes. “I’ll put it in a note. You can read it. Can I borrow your comb?”
    â€œYou kidding me?” I said. “I don’t own one.” Then the first bell rang.
    We had five minutes before the next bell when we were supposed to be in our seats. I hit the boys’ restroom. It wasn’t a problem after Jackson Showalter left except for sixth graders. When they were inthere, you didn’t go. You held it. But when the coast was clear, I’d drop by the restroom just to wash my hands or move my hair around a little.
    It was empty except for Josh Hunnicutt, who had to stand on tiptoes at the urinal. We were both at the sinks.
    He gave me a nod. Then he reached in his jeans pocket and pulled out Natalie’s phone to show me.
    â€œWhoa,” I said. “Listen, Josh, that’s stealing.” But I was grinning.
    â€œNot if I don’t take it home,” he said.
    The one place Natalie had no hope of finding her phone was in the boys’ restroom, right? We decided to put it up on the top of the wall of a toilet stall. Those walls don’t go to the ceiling.
    Josh climbed on a toilet. “Beam me up,” he said, and I swung him onto my shoulders. He weighed practically nothing.
    So that was that. He planted the phone up there, and we made it to class with seconds to spare.
    A while later, I got Lynette’s note. We were taking a quiz when this crumpled piece of paper sailed onto my desk. It said:
    MY PARENTS ARE GETTING A DIVORCE—
    IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES.
    Which was all new to me. And so was the word
irreconcilable
.
    My mom hadn’t said anything, even though she and Mrs. Stanley were really close. I was sorry. I thought about the Showalters, Jackson’s parents, but I was sorrier for Lynette.
    But we were taking a quiz, so it was more or less quiet. And from way off you could hear a tinny little song playing over and over. Natalie’s phone was ringing from the boys’ restroom. It was probably her mother.
    Natalie herself spent the afternoon on the nurse’s cot, though there wasn’t a mark on her. It was going to take a couple of days before she’d confess to her mother that she’d lost her phone. But as we know, you don’t slow down Natalie for long.
    That would have been the day I found a grown man—in a suit—crying on our stairs when I got home. But that’s another chapter.

7
    I came in the front hall and the man was sitting halfway up the stairs, between me and my room. His face was in his hands, and he was sobbing.
    It was sad, and surprising. He must have been one of Mom’s customers. Mom herself came out of her office door and saw me down here. Then she saw the man huddled on the stairs.
    â€œBrian,