Bullet Point by Peter Abrahams Read Free Book Online Page B

are. When’s the first practice?”
    Wyatt took a deep breath.
    “For baseball, I mean. You’re on the team, right? Got to be—I saw you hit. Hardest thing in sports, according to Ted Williams—hitting a baseball.”
    “How’d you know that?”
    “Know what?”
    “Ted Williams, all of it.”
    “My dad was a huge fan. He could spout off stats ad nauseam.”
    “Sorry,” said Wyatt.
    “For what? He’s not dead, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
    “Oh, good.”
    “Yeah, great.”
    “So he just stopped being a fan?”
    “Got involved in other things,” Greer said. “Other games, let’s say.”
    “Football?”
    She gave him another look. “Know what I like about you?” she said. “Besides your batting stroke?”
    Wyatt felt himself reddening, hoped it didn’t show; in fact, she’d somehow sent a charge through his whole body.
    “Your sense of humor,” Greer said. “That’s what I like—no one’s got a sense of humor in this town.”
    “I’m actually not on the team,” Wyatt said.
    “That one I don’t get.”
    “It’s not a joke.”
    Greer put a finger to her chin: a nice-looking chin with a tiny cleft. “Not on the team but you can hit, so let me guess. I got it—booted off for getting caught with a six-pack.”
    “No.”
    “A crack pipe.”
    “C’mon.”
    “You’re right. No doper, obviously. You don’t have that look in your eye.”
    “What look?”
    “Absent,” Greer said. “So that brings us down to something weird, like you were caught with the coach’s wife.”
    “It’s nothing like that,” Wyatt said. “I just moved here and they’ve got rules about transfer students.”
    “Of course they do. They’ve got rules for everything, rules that only they can break.”
    Wyatt shrugged.
    “Must be frustrating,” Greer said.
    “It’s all right.”
    “Where were you living before?”
    “East Canton.”
    “A dump worse than this one.”
    “It’s not so bad.”
    “Your dad got transferred or something?”
    “Huh?”
    “Or your mom? To a new job—your reason for moving in the middle of the year.”
    “No,” Wyatt said. “I came myself.”
    “On the lam?”
    “You got it.”
    Greer laughed. “Your way of saying no more questions, I bet.” She glanced at the clock. “How about a cup of coffee, a Coke, something?”
    “Um, okay.”
    There were Cokes in the drink machine behind her, but Greer didn’t open it. Instead she grabbed her leather jacket from under the counter and said, “Let’s go in your car.”
    “Yeah?” He glanced around, saw no one else to take care of the bowling alley. By that time, Greer was practically at the door. He followed her. She held the door for him, then locked it. “It’s okay to close early?”
    “Why not?” said Greer.
    “What if someone wants to bowl?”
    “They can scratch that itch elsewhere.”
    Wyatt and Greer walked to the Mustang. A gust of wind rose and blew her against him.
    “Sorry,” he said.
    “For what?”
    They got in, Wyatt hurriedly gathering books and papers off her seat and tossing them in back.
    “First time in a Mustang, believe it or not,” Greer said.
    Wyatt turned the key. “This one’s real old,” he said. He started backing out of the space, glanced at her. “Seat belt.”
    Greer grinned. “That’s what my grandmother always says.”
    “She’s right,” Wyatt said, at the very moment they came to a big icy patch in the middle of the empty lot. Without thinking—but even with thought he might have done itanyway—Wyatt spun the wheel hard and goosed the pedal. The Mustang spun around once in a tight doughnut, Greer suddenly screaming and gripping his right forearm so hard it hurt, at the same time making it not so easy to bring the car out of the spin. But he did, straightening perfectly and driving out of the lot at five miles per hour, using the turn signal and looking both ways. Greer’s grip loosened on his arm, but she didn’t let go completely, not for ten or fifteen