The Killing Tree Read Online Free PDF

around, deciding which direction to head in. She blended
     in perfectly. Looking casual and careless as she scanned the crowd. After four years of high school, I was still unsure of
     how to be cool. So I did what I felt like doing. I crossed my arms and folded them across my chest—awkward and stiff.
    Della pulled me toward a group huddled around a grill. The crowd absorbed her, while I hung on the outskirts. I watched her
     laughing, flirting, talking up her “theories” on life. They were all watching her too. There was something about Della that
     you just had to watch. Swinging between dreadfully serious and pitifully shallow, you just couldn’t help but like her. Whether
     she was angry, sad, hurt, or hungry, her glow shined through. If I hadn’t loved her so much, I would have envied her. Instead,
     I just stood in awe.
    She slid up to a tall muscular man flipping burgers. Mr. Next-in-line. She smiled at him, and ran her hands through her hair
     to show off her new highlights. With her attention fully taken, I walked to the end of a dock and lit a cigarette. Normally,
     I didn’t smoke unless I was with Rusty or Della. But I felt how alone I was. When everyone else had hidden themselves in the
     crowd, they could see my back turned to them. So I smoked to show them that I was just a girl enjoying a cigarette. I wasn’t
     a girl scared to feel alone in the middle of a crowd.
    “Gotta light?” a voice asked me. A male voice.
    I didn’t turn around. My heart pulsed in my toes and I hated myself for feeling all jittery just because I heard a man’s voice.
    “How do you think this got lit, see anyone else around?” I asked, trying to hide the shake in my voice with brave words.
    He stopped suddenly, and I cringed inside. I had wanted to sound like I didn’t care that a man walked out to me. But I ended
     up sounding childish and mean.
    “Awright then,” he said lowly, more to himself than me, as he began walking away.
    “Here,” I said, turning around and offering my lighter.
    My eyes quickly searched him and I guessed that he wasn’t from Crooktop. There were two types of Crooktop boys. Ones that
     dreamed only of driving coal trucks like their daddies. And ones that didn’t care what they did, as long as it didn’t have
     the scent of coal dust on it. I could usually pick either kind out with one glance. The coal boys looked like fresh versions
     of their daddies. Wearing caps that proudly advertised their future trucking company. Hanging around the trucks, tuning them
     up and making them shiny. They took cues from their parents and only looked worried when the threat of another strike loomed,
     or when coal prices began to dive. The other boys, the dreamers, didn’t wear a consistent uniform. They were the ones that
     felt in their bones that they were born for something other than coal. And if you looked closely enough, their faces betrayed
     their worry. Their fear that even if they were born for something else, coal was all that Crooktop could give them. And as
     far I could tell, the man walking toward me was neither. He just didn’t seem to carry the pride or the worry over coal that
     all Crooktop boys seemed to be born with.
    “Thanks,” he said, taking the lighter from my hands.
    He faced the last bit of the day’s sun. And the burn of it on his skin showed that he was as brown as any white man could
     be. He stood before me, showing me his skin, his frayed jeans and stained T-shirt, but he didn’t speak. I wondered why. Maybe
     he just wanted to smoke. Or maybe he was disappointed in me, now that he was close.
    He tucked the end of his cigarette into a bottle and hurled it into the lake. We watched how far it sailed before plunking
     into little muddy ripples. He shuffled backwards from the edge of the dock, and I noticed how worn and muddy his shoes were.
     It was time for him to go. And if I didn’t want him to, I was going to have to speak.
    I held out my pack of Camels. “Need