The Most Wanted Read Online Free PDF

haven’t been a bit patient so far; why can’t you be patient enough to grow your last inch or two before you load all this on? I wanted to say, Kid, this barge is never going to get any lighter, and it will only sink lower in the water, no matter how fast you pole or bail. But there was something in her gaze, a kind of pleading, that suggested she already understood everything—the sorry way this looked, the inappropriateness of her claim, the risk of shame—about this thing she’d launched, and that it was beyond her, entirely beyond her, to correct the path of flight.
    And I sensed what I would later know: that Arley needed no help from me at experiencing guilt or regret. That she’d seen the world as mostly a place of recklessness all her young life. I’d learn that she had created a plan on paper, her Book of Life Goals, out of fear of growing up the way she’d been raised—that is, recklessly—and that, much as she loved Dillon, it hurt to see her carefully written entries on sports and clothes and manners become so many sticks and ladders, marks in rainbow ink, meaningless as bird tracks.
    As we stood up, I managed to avoid the impulse to pat her shoulder. Suddenly she pointed to the purple folder she carried and said, “I’m going to leave this with you all now. But there’s just one thing.”
    I sighed. “What?”
    “In our letters. In here. You’ll see that I lied at first. I said I was older.”
    “I see. But he knows now? Everything?”
    “Yes, ma’am. Everything. And he doesn’t mind.” I looked at the lean curve of Arley’s waist and thought, I’ll bet he doesn’t, I’ll just bet he doesn’t one bit, but all I said was, “Well. Then it’s no problem for me, I suppose.”
    I watched her close the door behind her, and said to myself, Well, we will just have to find a way for this girl to land as softly as possible. Then I sat down with my cold coffee, to read the “evidence” in her purple folder, which she’d labeled in filigreed sticker letters, “Dillon and Arlington LeGrande.”

CHAPTER TWO

Arley
    I USED TO THINK none of this would have happened if I’d been raised normal. But maybe it doesn’t change everything. Once I met a girl who grew up in a rich family in Dallas—her father was even a doctor—and she told me that in high school she was drunk every day; she drank milk and Scotch out of a thermos every morning. It had to be her parents’ fault, but I couldn’t see how. She told me they did everything for her.
    The way I see it, everything came out of me getting the job at Taco Haven. It was my first step. The way it worked was, Elena talked her mom into letting her get a part-time job. She told her mother it would make her “more responsible,” even though she didn’t even know whether she could find a job at that point! Then Elena went over to see Ginny Jack, the owner of Taco Haven (which was just across the street from our school, where Alamo Heights merges into San Antonio). She convinced Ginny that the two of us should work there, and that we should work the same hours—which she told Ginny was for safety but was really just so that we could goof around and be together. Then I had to talk my mama into letting me take the job. Which was not easy, but I was pretty set on it.
    It was going to be part of my master plan, anyhow, a way to save money for college or for moving out on my own. Some teachers were starting to say I could get a scholarship.
    Mama just said forget it. No way was I working Saturdays. She told me it was because she didn’t like me hanging around with Elena, not because of why you would think—that Elena was a little wild—but because Mr. G. had his own construction business and all. She didn’t want me getting ideas about what I should have or not have, I guess, but she acted like it was because the Gutierrezes were Hispanic and we were somehow better than them, which is a big laugh. We didn’t have much room to talk about social