Dark Water by Laura McNeal Read Free Book Online

Street, an old white cube of a building that my mom says was a
darling
little hamburger and ice cream stand back when Fallbrook was more like downtown Disney. It was my favorite place to eat, and I always ordered the shrimp burrito and horchata, a yummy milk and cinnamon drink. “I’ll pay you back,” I told Hickey after we shouted our orders in the general direction of the outdoor menu.
    “No need,” he said. His arms were freckled, and he jiggled the gearshift slightly as we idled at the drive-up window, watching a Hispanic woman fold a tortilla like you’d wrap a newborn baby.
    “Let’s go eat at the river,” Greenie said as soon as Hickey handed over his gift certificate and took three paper bags.
    “There isn’t time,” I said immediately.
    “We only have two classes after lunch,” Greenie said back, un-Greenie-like.
    There was a truck full of construction workers behind us now, waiting with hostile expressions. “Right or left?” Hickey asked.
    Left was back to art class and the return to compliance, provided nobody asked us what we were doing off campus.
    Right was the river. Sun glinted on the hood of Hickey’s car.
    “Right!” Greenie said gleefully, and without asking for my vote, her Hickeyman turned right, speeding us past the fakeIrish pub, the Art and Cultural Center, the Mission Theater, the Mexican market, the stoplight, and the brown stucco apartments with sheets draped over the windows.
    “You recall that my mother is a sub, right?” I said. “I’m going to get in gigantic, life-threatening trouble, Greenie. So are you, if you care.”
    “We’ll be back before the end of school,” Greenie said. “Relax, you big stress cow. You love the river!”
    “But I’ll be marked absent in art. They’ll notice right away what’s happened.”
    “I worked as an aide in the attendance office last semester,” Greenie said, poking her straw decisively into her horchata. “They aren’t always totally on the ball, I promise. And you know who happens to be working as an aide this period?” She gave me a look I didn’t find at all comforting. “Paula Menard. Who totally owes me one.”
    I adjusted to the situation the way I suppose people adjust to being on a hijacked plane. “So, Hickey,” I said, feeling miserable and a little sick. “What’s up with the name?”
    “You’d have to ask my great-great-granddaddy, I guess.” He shifted into gear and went faster than any intelligent person would drive on the tight sunlit curves. Huge oak and sycamore trees grow beside the road to De Luz, and the gullies are full of wild cucumber leaves. It was like traveling, much too quickly, down the green-glass tube of a waterslide.
    “Hickey’s his last name, dummy,” Greenie said with what I guess was an affectionate tone. Her loyalty was with Hickey now. I could feel it.
    “What’s your first name, then?” I asked, clutching the seats on every curve.
    “You won’t believe it,” Greenie said, delighted with what she knew and I didn’t. She sucked horchata through her straw. “Try to guess his name.”
    “Rumpelstiltskin.”
    “Ha, ha. Guess again.”
    “How am I going to guess his name?” I had gone from being panicked about missing school to being annoyed at how tightly I had to clutch the back of Greenie’s seat.
    “It starts with O,” Greenie said.
    “Ollie. Oral.”
    “Oral Hickey! That would be hysterical! But no,” Greenie said. “Three wrong, none right.”
    I was stumped, also carsick. I couldn’t think of any other
O
names. Mr. Hickey downshifted with one freckled arm to take the right fork to De Luz. We were less than a mile from the trailhead if we didn’t die in a fiery crash.
    “What if a police officer sees us out here on a school day?” I couldn’t help asking. “Won’t they know we’re truant?”
    “Truant,” Hickey repeated in a slightly mocking voice. Hooted, actually. “Where I come from, we just call it ‘ditching.’ ”
    “Guess his name,”