The Liberation of Gabriel King Read Online Free PDF Page A

forgotten it was picture day, so I’d worn my oldest tattered overalls. Frita was two rows above me and her hair looked perfect, all done up in a neat bun on top of her head. She was smiling real huge. There were only ten kids in our class, but even so, Frita stood out. She was the only black person in the picture and the only girl on the top row.
    I remembered how Frita’s class picture got all crushed in the dust, so I yawned like I was bored instead of grumpy.
    “Who wants a stupid old picture anyway,” I said. “Maybe I’ll throw it away.”
    “Throw it away?” Frita said, opening her eyes wide. “You can’t waste a good picture like this. Look, there’s Ms. Murray—the best teacher we ever had. You want a picture of Ms. Murray, don’t you?”
    “Nah,” I said. “You can have it. I’ll get another one next year.”
    Frita took the picture out of my hands.
    “Well, I’ll keep it if you’re going to throw it away,” she said, “but you know you’re not staying behind. You got a certificate to prove it, right there.”
    I picked up another pebble and aimed for Gerald Ford again, but this time I hit Jimmy Carter right on the nose. Frita shook her head.
    “Gabe,” she said, “we got to do something about you.”
    “You mean so I don’t get pounded?”
    “I mean so you’ll move up with me next year.”
    “Why can’t you stay behind?”
    Frita wrinkled her nose.
    “Then how would we ever get out of elementary school? Nope,” she said. “We got to think of a plan.”
    “A plan?”
    “Yup,” said Frita. “Something to help you stop being chicken.”
    I scowled. Didn’t seem to be anything that could do that, but I thought it over.
    “Frita,” I said at last.
    “Yeah?”
    “If we can’t make me brave,
then
will you stay behind with me?”
    Frita frowned, but finally she shrugged.
    “I guess,” she said. “But I’m going to come up with something, and when I do, you better try it. No halfsies. Deal?”
    “Deal,” I said, sticking out my pinky.
    Frita linked hers with mine and we shook on it.

Chapter 7
FRITA’S PLAN
    W HEN F RITA SAYS SHE’S GOING TO COME UP WITH A PLAN, YOU BETTER watch out, because it is by God going to happen. The very next day she called me on the phone to say she’d come up with an idea, so I rode my bike over to her house even though it was pouring down rain. Got there in ten minutes flat, but I was still soaked. Frita met me in the driveway and I could tell she was excited. Her eyes were sparkling like water in a puddle after the sun comes out.
    “Here’s what you’re going to do,” she said, as soon as I’d dried off and we were in her room with the door shut. “First, you’re going to make a list. Write down everything you’re afraid of.” She narrowed her eyes until they were teeny, tiny slivers. “And you
better
be honest or it won’t work.”
    “I’ve got to write down
everything
?”
    Frita nodded. She handed me paper and a pencil and waited for me to write.
    “Then what’ll we do?” I asked, suspicious.
    Frita grinned. “Then we’ll cross ’em off one by one, saving Duke Evans and the fifth grade for last when you’re most brave.”
    I about choked.
That was the plan?
    “Nuh-uh,” I said, leaving that paper in a heap, but Frita gave me a look that could have withered okra on the stalk.
    “You pinky-swore,” she reminded me.
    Drat.
    I picked up the pencil and made a column of numbers down one side of the paper. I wrote
fifth grade
next to number one even though we were going to save that till last. Then I wrote down
Duke Evans, Frankie Carmen, spiders
, and
alligators
next to numbers two, three, four, and five.
    “You done?” Frita asked after a while.
    “Nope,” I said.
    Frita jumped on the bed. She was wearing a bright orange jumpsuit with flared ankles, and every time she jumped, the flares puffed around her legs.
    “Done yet?”
    I wasn’t. I was only on number eighteen.
    “Maybe I’d be able to finish if you’d