Wish Read Online Free PDF Page B

in the weeds by the road and sat next to me. “You have to tell me what’s the matter.”
    This boy beat all. He sure had a lot of gumption for a little ole redheaded up-down boy.
    â€œI don’t have to tell you anything,” I said.
    â€œThen you have to tell somebody .” He pushed at his glasses.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œMy mama says you should never keep your troubles to yourself. She says if you share ’em with somebody, they get smaller.”
    â€œGo away,” I said.
    â€œDid you kick somebody again?”
    I shook my head.
    â€œPoke ’em with a pencil?”
    â€œNo!” I hollered.
    â€œMama made this needlepoint sign that says, ‘If all our troubles were hung on a line, you’d choose yours and I’d choose mine.’”
    I lifted my head and stared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked him.
    â€œIt means everybody’s got troubles and some of ’em are worse than yours.” He yanked at a blade of grass and tossed it into the road. “Or something like that,” he added.
    Ha! That was a good one. I couldn’t think of anybody with worse troubles than me. Then I looked at Howard with his eyebrows knitted together and a look of pure worry on his face and before I knew it, I was spilling those troubles out to him. I told him how I wished Scrappy wasn’t in jail. How he and I used to play poker and watch Wheel of Fortune and eat macaroni and cheese for breakfast. I told him how scared I was when I saw my mama crying into her pillow in her dark bedroom, not even caring one little bit whether I had clean clothes or even went to school. I told him how Mama and Scrappy would holler at each other the livelong day while me and Jackie sat on her bed with the radio turned up loud so we didn’t have to hear them. I told him about all those times I watched from the bedroom window when Scrappy drove off with his tires screeching and gravel flying while Mama yelled “Good riddance to bad rubbish” from the front porch. I told him how much I missed Jackie, who knew all the words to nearly every song on the radio and would french braid my hair and share her nail polish with me. And then I told him those mean things I’d said to Bertha.
    When I was done, the silence settled over us, still and soft, like a veil. The sun had gotten lower in the sky, sitting on top of the mountains in the distance, and the air had grown cooler.
    For a minute, I thought maybe Howard was embarrassed by all that stuff I’d told him and didn’t know what to say. I was starting to wish I had never shared my troubles with him like that. But then he looked right at me and said, “Want my advice?”
    â€œUm, sure, I guess,” I said.
    â€œYou can’t do nothing about Scrappy and them back in Raleigh,” he said. “The only thing you can fix is what you done to Bertha.”
    I guess he was right. I couldn’t fix my mess of a family, but I could try to make things right with Bertha. I stood up and brushed the dirt off the back of my shorts. And then I couldn’t hardly believe my eyes. Right there at the edge of the woods was that brown-and-black, floppy-eared dog!
    I put my finger to my lips and went, “Shhhh.”
    The dog was watching me with his head cocked to the side.
    â€œDon’t move,” I whispered to Howard.
    I took one slow step toward the dog and guess what? He wagged his tail! Two tiny little wags. That dog liked me.
    â€œHey, fella,” I said, taking another step.
    Then, wouldn’t you know it, a car came roaring up the road and whizzed past us and that dog darted off into the woods.
    I stamped my foot. “Dang it!”
    I’d almost forgotten Howard was there when he said, “I’ve seen that dog before.”
    â€œHe’s mine,” I said.
    â€œReally?”
    â€œWell, he’s gonna be.”
    â€œI bet he’s full of ticks,” he