Chasing the Skip by Janci Patterson Read Free Book Online Page B

and shut the door on Ian, so he wouldn’t be able to hear. Persuading Dad was way easier when skips weren’t listening. “You’re not going to leave him in there, are you?” I asked. “What if something happens?”
    Dad raised his eyebrows. “Like what, exactly?”
    “Well,” I said, “what if he manages to reach the gear shift from the back seat and rolls the truck into the street? Or what if someone comes by and he convinces them that some psycho’s taken him prisoner and they let him go?”
    Dad looked over my shoulder at Ian. “Seems unlikely,” he said. “I have to leave skips alone sometimes when I’m tracking by myself.”
    “But you’re not by yourself now. You have me. And I can watch him.”
    I expected Dad to refuse out of hand, but instead he watched me silently for a minute.
    “What?” I asked.
    “I told you I didn’t want you getting involved with my work.”
    “And I told you that if you didn’t want me involved, you shouldn’t drag me along. If you don’t think I’m capable of watching a guy who’s chained in a truck —who’s so secure you’re not worried about leaving him alone —then you might as well drop me off with Child and Family Services.”
    I held my breath. That last bit was taking it a little far. He might decide I was right about the Child Services part.
    But he didn’t.
    “Okay, fine,” Dad said. “I’ll bring you back some food. But you watch him from outside the truck, okay?”
    “Okay,” I said. “I promise.”
    Dad gave me a sharp nod and then headed into the restaurant, looking back at me once over his shoulder.
    When he was gone, I stood outside the truck, wondering what to do. I mean, I looked like an idiot standing there in the middle of a parking space. I could at least open the door and talk to Ian. Dad hadn’t forbidden that. If you weren’t supposed to leave dogs alone in locked vehicles, you probably shouldn’t do it with skips, either.
    I stepped over to the driver’s-side door—opposite Ian’s seat—and cracked it open.
    “If you’re really not hungry, could you get me a burger?” Ian asked.
    “Um,” I said, “I’m supposed to watch you. Sorry.”
    “Eh. It’s cool.”
    I leaned against the edge of the open door so my head was half inside the truck. “I like your shirt,” I said.
    “Really?”
    “I like metal too.”
    Ian smiled, like he was actually impressed. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a straight-edger.”
    “I’m not,” I said. “But a friend of mine is.”
    The straight-edger scene is kind of different in Salt Lake. In most places it’s just a group of teenagers who listen to metal music and don’t drink or do drugs or smoke, which is cool. But in Utah it’s turned into kind of a gang. The straight-edgers there are always beating people up and graffitiing stuff, which Jake thought was stupid. So he wore the shirt to try to show people you didn’t have to be all violent to be a straight-edger—until some guy decided to take it out on him by bashing his head into a sound wall.
    “That’s cool,” Ian said.
    I smiled. Ian, who took an arrest in stride with his head up and his eyes open, thought I was cool. “So are you doing okay back there? It doesn’t look very comfortable to be chained up like that.”
    “Yeah, these chains kind of chafe. You think you could unlock me?”
    “No,” I said.
    Ian grinned. “Kidding. So what are you doing here, anyway? Your old man bring you along a lot?”
    “No,” I said. “Just this last week. My mom sort of took off, so I didn’t have anywhere else to go.” I don’t know why I told him that. Maybe I thought he would understand, since his parents were so messed up. I expected Ian to say something about how sorry he was, or about how awful it was to be left.
    “Lucky you,” he said.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “It means good riddance. Parents are a pain in the ass.”
    “Yeah, but now I’m stuck here, when all my friends are back in