The Paper Cowboy Read Online Free PDF Page B

I said.
    â€œI’m so sorry about your sister.”
    I frowned at her. “I don’t want to talk about it.” Sister Ann was writing spelling words on the board and I pretended to concentrate on that.
    â€œDid she really burn up like a firecracker?” Lizzie asked. Her blue eyes were sparkling, but whether from concern or excitement I couldn’t tell.
    Eddie glared at her. “He said he doesn’t want to talk about it.”
    â€œWell, I was just asking,” Lizzie said.
    I pulled a composition notebook from the middle of the stack, causing her to drop all the ones on top. They fell to the floor with a crash.
    Sister Ann whirled around. “Lizzie Johnson, what are you doing?”
    â€œTommy made me—”
    â€œAre you handing out the notebooks or is Tommy?”
    â€œI am,” Lizzie admitted.
    I sat piously in my seat, my hands folded neatly on top of my desk.
    â€œWell, if you can’t do your job in an appropriate manner, I shall have to ask someone else.”
    â€œSorry, Sister,” Lizzie said, bowing her head.
    Sister Ann turned back to the chalkboard. Lizzie bent down and picked up the notebooks, but before she moved on to the next desk, she stuck her tongue out at me. She kind of reminded me of Mary Lou when she did that. I swallowed, trying to force down the lump in my throat.
    Eddie leaned over to me and whispered, “Did you bring the paper?”
    â€œWhich paper?” I asked blankly.
    â€œThe paper.”
    â€œOh yeah.” I checked my satchel. Sure enough, there it was, right where I had put it. Right before . . . “Here it is.”
    â€œWe gonna show it to the choirboys at recess?”
    I nodded. “That’s the plan.”
    The choirboys were what we called Luke and Peter. They lived in the nice part of town and Eddie and I had kind of a rivalry with them. They were always showing us the new pocket watches or army knives
they’d
gotten. Now we finally had something cool to show them. ’Cause fighting commies was one thing we all agreed on. I hated communists almost as much as I loved cowboys.
    But before recess came spelling. And then reading. And after that religion. And then it was finally time to go outside.
    There was no empty field or anything like that. The oldest boys in the eighth grade (that was Mary Lou’s class) brought out long, wooden, black-and-white construction horses and used them to block off the cobblestone street in front of the school. They set up a couple of saw horses in the middle of the street too, creating two sections. One was for the girls to skip rope and play hopscotch. The other was for us boys. The nuns walked in circles, keeping an eye on everyone.
    When the nuns were at the far end of the street, I gestured for Peter and Luke to follow Eddie and me over to a big elm tree. “Got something to show you,” I whispered.
    â€œWhat is it this time?” Luke asked, rolling his eyes. His mom must have made him get a haircut every two weeks, because his dark hair was always neatly trimmed. But he had a twisted arm from a bad case of polio in second grade and it just kind of hung at his side. Nobody dared say a word about it, ’cause that’d be bad luck and then maybe they’d catch polio too.
    Peter snickered. He was Lizzie’s twin brother, and they looked a lot alike. He also had curly red hair, which he kept cut very short so it wouldn’t curl too much, and a face full of freckles. Mention the resemblance, however, and Peter was likely to slug you. Unlike Mary Lou and me, Peter and Lizzie didn’t like each other. “Probably another stupid comic book.”
    I grabbed Peter’s tie and yanked, hard. He stumbled and almost fell on the cobblestones. “Hey,” I said. “Just because
Kid Colt Outlaw
isn’t as famous as
The Lone Ranger
doesn’t mean it isn’t a good comic too!”
    â€œWatch it,” Peter snapped,