Bullet Point by Peter Abrahams Read Free Book Online Page A

Wyatt said, a not completely unfunny remark that maybe surprised both of them.
    Greer laughed. “What’s your name?”
    “Wyatt.”
    “Wyatt. Never met a Wyatt. Sounds like a gunslinger riding in from the old West.”
    This might have been a place for another not completely unfunny remark, but none came to mind. Wyatt’s mouth seemed to open on its own, and out popped something really stupid. “How old are you?”
    Greer raised the non-ring eyebrow. “How old am I?”
    “None of my business,” Wyatt said, backtracking as fast as he could.
    “It’s not a state secret,” Greer said. “Nineteen. And you?”
    “Me?”
    “Yeah, you. Now that we’re minding each other’s business.”
    “Seventeen,” Wyatt said. “Just about.”
    “When’s your birthday?”
    “August.”
    “So what you mean by ‘just about’ is that you’ll be seventeen in, like, four or five months.” Greer’s eyes, so dark and shiny, seemed to get even brighter, like she was about to laugh, but she didn’t.
    “Yeah.”
    “What date?”
    “The second.”
    “Me, too.”
    “August second?”
    “November,” Greer said. “You believe in astrology?”
    Wyatt had never really thought about that; did now, real fast. “No,” he said.
    “Me neither,” said Greer. “It’s complete bullshit. For example, suppose we were living on another planet.”
    “Then, um, uh…”
    “The angles would be different, of course,” Greer said.
    “And?”
    “So the stars wouldn’t line up the same way. The constellations would be gone. No Gemini, no Aquarius, no Taurus the bull. No constellations, no astrology.”
    A silence fell in the bowling alley. “Are you in college?” Wyatt said.
    “Nope,” said Greer. “I’m in the bowling alley business.”
    “How’s that working out?”
    What was this? A second not completely unfunny remark? Yes, because Greer laughed again. Wyatt had gone out for a month or two with a girl in the freshman class last year, and been to a few drunken parties in houses when the parents were gone, parties where there’d been some pairing off to various bedrooms, but other than that he had little experience with girls, so…so actually this was going pretty well.
    Greer stopped laughing, very sudden. “It’s working out like shit,” she said.
    “Oh, um.”
    Greer’s eyes narrowed and she looked like she was about to say something negative, but then the phone rang. She picked it up. “Torrance Bowl,” she said. Wyatt heard a man on the other end. He sounded irritated. The brightness went out of Greer’s eyes. She took a key off the wall and handed it to Wyatt, not really looking at him. He went outside, lethimself into the cage, turned the dial up to fast, and crushed baseballs for half an hour.
     
    Back inside, Greer was still behind the counter, punching numbers on a calculator. “Time’s up already?” she said, not taking her eyes off the little screen. “You can hit some more if you like. How much does the electricity cost? A few cents?”
    “There’s wear and tear on the machine,” Wyatt said, a concept that came directly from one of Rusty’s diatribes. For the first time, it occurred to Wyatt that maybe Rusty had had a role in shaping him; a very unpleasant thought.
    Greer’s fingers went still; she looked up. “Yeah,” she said. “You an accountant in training?”
    “No.” But—supposing he didn’t make it to the big leagues, an idea he knew to be a fantasy yet still hadn’t abandoned completely—he’d need a job someday and he wasn’t bad with numbers.
    “What are you?”
    “What am I?”
    “Like, in school, or what?”
    “Yeah, in school.”
    “Where?”
    “Here.”
    “Bridger?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Go, Bears. Rah rah.”
    “You went there?”
    “My whole life.”
    “Huh?”
    “Just feels that way,” Greer said. She gave him a long look. “Or are you the kind who fits in?” Wyatt didn’t answer; but yes, he was. Wasn’t he? “Yeah,” she said. “I believe you