The Weight of the World Read Online Free PDF

elderly gentleman when another man stepped
in. “I've got the Fire,” he offered, “if you'd like to see it.”
    June
looked up from her Kindle. The younger man was perhaps in his early
forties with a high hairline and large ears. He was wearing blue
jeans and a t-shirt with a brown curdoroy blazer. His black hair was
slicked back and his brown eyes trained on June. “It's in color,”
he said, flashing a smile. June returned the smile and flipped her
long red hair, despite her unease. Was he hitting on her?
    She
looked down at his screen, as a courtesy, even though she had seen
the Kindle Fire and wasn't that impressed with the battery life. Her
eyes fell on a verse of poetry in the text. Golden-throned
Hera, among immortals the queen. It was a page from Edith Hamilton's Mythology. She froze. It had to be coincidence. There was no way this man knew.
    “That's
very nice,” she said. She forced a smile back on her lips and
nodded her head. “Though, perhaps it is more than the schools need.
Battery life is a more valuable feature for this application.”
    The
man nodded. “You have a mailing list?” he asked.
    June
turned to the table and picked up the clipboard with the email
sign-up sheet. “We do. We'll be sending out periodic updates about
the campaign.” She handed him a pen and watched carefully as he
signed his name.
    Julius
Spade. She committed it to memory.
    “Have
a good night,” he said, handing back the pen and slipping his
Kindle into the interior pocket of his blazer. “I'll be keeping an
eye on you.”

    Nick
Morrisey watched Tyra Washington walk away from him, her dark hair
swaying wide with her fury stomp. He had pretended to look hurt until
he was sure she wasn’t going to look back, then he leaned against
the light post behind him and pulled out his cell phone to set his
Facebook status to single.
    He
looked up from his phone just in time to see his fellow Pantheon
member, Valerie Hess, wave goodbye to a female friend. She was one of
the only people wearing long pants and her modest lavender blouse
might as well have been a nun’s habit, seen among
the crowd of girls walking around the fair in shorts and bikini tops. She
was alone. Nick turned his red visor upside down, jammed it down over
his mop of black curls, and swooped in.
    “ Heya,
Hess. How’s the summer treating you?”
    Valerie
took a deep breath and let it out, steeling herself to deal with
Nick. “Great. Relaxing. How is your summer?”
    “ Rescued
a kid from a rip current this morning,” he said, as if that
happened pretty regularly. “Saved his life. It kind of brought me
back to my unfinished business.”
    “ As
a lifeguard?”
    “ You,”
he said, stopping in her path so that Valerie had to focus on him.
She was a pretty Chinese girl with a quiet presence. Nick liked
bombshells, but what he really liked was to ruffle Valerie’s
feathers.
    Valerie
rolled her eyes.
    “ You
have to admit,” he said, “we have great chemistry.”
    “ You
have to admit, you like girls who put out in under two weeks and I
want none of that.” Valerie was incredibly annoyed, but she kept
her tone level. She remembered how he had stood outside the
abstinence club pledge drive this winter and made fun of her choices.
There was no way she would ever consider getting caught up with a guy
like him.
    “ We’re
Pantheon, Valerie. We need someone to lean on.”
    “ The
Pantheon has fourteen other members; I like all of them better than
you.” Valerie stepped around Nick and kept walking. She felt anger
surging up behind her and stopped. Nick was really mad.
    “ You’re
really kidding yourself,” Nick said when she turned around.
    “ I
think you’re the one who’s kidding himself.”
    “ Just
admit it. You may have pledged yourself to those virgins, but you
still want me. You always have.”
    Valerie
shook her head.
    “ You
wouldn’t be the first.”
    “ You’re
delusional.”
    “ I
can have any girl I want. I'm a god. Think of