The Liberation of Gabriel King Read Online Free PDF

let me concentrate…”
    Frita was quiet for a long time. She did handstands against the wall and watched me upside down. I started a second column down the other side of the paper.
    “
Now
are you done?” she finally asked.
    Truth was, there were maybe just a few more things I could have written down, but I said yes just so she’d stop asking.
    “Okay,” said Frita, sliding against the wall. She crumpledin an upside-down heap of gangly legs and elbow-y arms. “What’s the first thing on your list?”
    “You mean aside from Duke and Frankie and the fifth grade?”
    Frita nodded.
    “Spiders,” I said slowly. Big ones, small ones, and hairy fanged ones. I’d never met a decent spider.
    “Okay,” said Frita, “we’ll start with that.”
    “What are we going to do?” I asked, but Frita didn’t answer. She took her raincoat out of her closet and pulled on her yellow galoshes.
    “You’ll see…,” she said. “This is the best plan ever.”
    Then she stopped.
    “Better get the jars and flashlights out of the basement,” she muttered.
    I stopped dead in my tracks. Frita’s basement was number eight on my list and she didn’t even know it.
    “I’ll wait up here,” I said, but Frita grabbed my arm.
    “We’re just going down for a minute,” she told me. Then she walked out of her room and down the hall, dragging me with her. There was a light at the top of the basement stairs, but it was too high up even for Frita to reach, so we crept down the steps real slow. They creaked under our weight and Frita’s feet made loud squishing sounds in her galoshes. I listened just in case Terrance was down there waiting for someone to pound on, but there wasn’t a sound. Then I listened in case he was upstairs waiting to sneak up on us like he’ddone when we were checking out his punching bags. But I didn’t hear anything from that direction either.
    My heart was beating super fast.
Ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump.
    It was dank and musty in the Wilsons’ basement, and everywhere I turned, there were posters that said MALCOLM X on them and drawings of panther heads staring at me from the darkness. I turned in a full circle, staring at the walls, wondering why Terrance hung out down here. Mrs. Wilson said a boy his age needed privacy, but I didn’t see what was so private about punching things.
    I followed Frita away from the stairs over to a box that was sitting on the floor. She dug around for the flashlights while I stood next to the little punching bag, breathing in the smell of sweat. My eyes started to adjust and I studied the canvas real hard. That’s when I saw it—even in the darkness.
    There was blood on one corner.
    I stepped back quick, my heart beating twice as fast, and backed right into Frita, who was putting new batteries into one of the flashlights.
    “What’s wrong?” she asked, but I could hardly breathe.
    “Let’s get out of here,” I whispered.
    “Why?” Frita said, taking out two jars and turning on the flashlight. “We’re just getting the stuff we need. Isn’t any reason why we shouldn’t—”
    That’s when Frita’s flashlight went out.
    “
BOO!
”
    I screamed, and then I saw him.
    Terrance was standing right behind Frita, one hand over the front of her flashlight.
    I didn’t wait around. I took off so fast, I should have gotten a gold medal. There was a space the width of one small person between Terrance and the wall, and I squeezed through it and bolted up the stairs.
    “Where you going, Twerp?” Terrance called out after me, but I was already gone. I hadn’t even put my raincoat on, but I stood outside and got drenched waiting for Frita.

Chapter 8
SWAMP SPIDERS
    F RITA WAS SOME MIFFED .
    “Stupid Terrance,” she said. “I bet the basement was on your list and now you’re twice as scared of it. Big brothers ruin everything,” she muttered. We turned off onto the old dirt road. “But don’t worry. We still got plenty more things to cross off.”
    That’s what I