Tumbleweeds Read Online Free PDF

thought football games were for monkeys.
    Trey grinned. “Well, that’s okay. And it’s okay to be like you are. We understand, don’t we, John?” He touched her arm. “John and me, we don’t have no parents, either. My old man split before I was born, and my mom left me with my aunt when I was four, and I never saw her again, and John’s mother died when he was seven. His dad—if you can call him that—is around, but we don’t see much of him. So…”—Trey’s grin widened—“we got being orphans in common.”
    Orphans
… The word pierced through her like an arrow shot from a bow and shattered her secret place. Pain flooded where her parents had been alive and well, blinding her, forcing her to see.
    “Catherine Ann, are you okay?” John asked.
    Tears welled in her eyes. Her mouth trembled. “Cathy,” she said. “My name is Cathy.”

Chapter Five
     
    W hat did I say to make her cry, John?”
    “I think it was the word
orphan
, TD. Maybe up until you said it, she hadn’t realized her parents were dead. It took a while for me to feel my mother gone, and then one morning, I woke up and it hit me that she was dead and I’d never see her again.”
    “I remember that morning,” Trey said. “You ran around like hornets were after you.”
    “It’s the most terrible feeling in the world.”
    “Ah, jeez, John, I didn’t mean to make her feel like that.”
    “Of course you didn’t. She knows it, too.”
    “I want to do something nice to make it up to her.”
    “Like what? Pick her some flowers?”
    “For Pete’s sake, John, where am I going to find flowers to pick in the dead of winter?”
    “You could
buy
them.”
    “With what? I’ve already spent my allowance.”
    “
John!
Trey!
Stop talking and pay attention!” The order came from Coach Mayer, head coach of the ninth-grade football team. He stood at the blackboard, tapping at diagrams of game plays with a yardstick. John’s and Trey’s school schedules had been arranged for themto attend the physical-education class made up of the players of the junior high football teams, seventh through ninth grade. It was really a bull session designed to give the coaches extra time to tutor their players. In the long history of the school’s successful athletic program, John and Trey were the youngest students and only sixth graders ever assigned to the class. Big things were expected of their respective talents as they got older and moved into the higher ranks—Trey as quarterback and John as a wide receiver.
    The boys drew apart and focused their attention on the blackboard, but Trey’s fingers, already long and sinewy, beat out a rapid tap on the surface of his desk, a signal to John that he was in his thinking mode. That could be good, and that could be bad. One thing John knew, Trey had it bad for Catherine Ann—Cathy—Benson. Well, who wouldn’t? She looked like a little angel, all blond curls and blue eyes and sweet dimples when she smiled. Which wasn’t going to happen too often now. After that morning when John realized his mother was gone for good, his world had gone black for a long, long time. It would be a while before he and Trey saw those dimples again.
    Trey snapped his fingers. “I know! We can get her a puppy,” he whispered. “Gil Baker told me that Wolf Man’s collie had a litter last week.”
    John caught Coach Mayer’s frown in their direction and wrote on his notebook for Trey to read:
You think he’ll give us one?
    Trey mouthed,
Why not?
    To their consternation, the coaches did not dismiss the class, the last period of the day, until after the bell rang and Cathy had gone by the time they reached the home economics room to escort her to her locker. Except for athletics, she was in all their classes and shared the same lunch period, and they’d been able to watch her every move for most of the day. She’d looked lonely and lost and kept to herself, speaking to no one and barely to them, but everyone knew of the