Firegirl by Tony Abbott Read Free Book Online Page A

Mrs. Tracy said. Jeff wasn’t there, either. He had gone for a long weekend to visit his father, who lived in New York with his girlfriend.
    I was amazed at how relieved I was that neither of them was there. Friday was great. I could just do my work. I had felt so sick to my stomach the day before from the talk on the school yard and the prayer ring. But Friday turned out really good.
    At lunch I sat alone and did some catch-up homework. Rich, Joey, and Eric were two tables away making faces and waving their hands about some show they had seen the night before. Courtney, Darlene, and Kayla were running around with some of the kindergartners doing something I didn’t know about. That was all fine. It was the usual, and I liked it.
    A big chunk of the class time was taken up talking about and doing stuff for the elections. Mrs. Tracy said we would have our primary to choose candidates in a little over two weeks, so we had to get into high gear if we wanted to get everything done in time. That was fine with me. It felt like regular school again.
    I didn’t see Jeff until the morning bus on Monday. He was waiting at the stop. He seemed more or less okay, but quiet.
    “So, how was your weekend in New York?” I asked him.
    He shrugged. “My dad gave me some of his stupid old comics. I don’t even know why he has them there, but his girlfriend wanted them out. That’s pretty much it.”
    “Yeah. What kind of stuff did you do —”
    “I never do anything there,” he snapped, finally looking at me. “The guy can’t wait for the weekend to be over and for me to be gone.”
    “Really? Sorry,” I said.
    He looked past me up the street to where the bus would come from. “We’re supposed to do all kinds of stuff. It’s supposed to be different when I go there. But all he wants is to go places with his girlfriend. The jerk.”
    “What, they do stuff alone?” I asked. “What do you do?”
    “Nothing. I just wait. Plus, they live in this really tiny place. It’s such a waste.”
    When the bus finally came, he stomped up the steps and slumped into a seat. I sat down next to him, but he just stared out the window. I wanted to ask about the car again, but bringing up his uncle didn’t feel right just then. When the bus was weaving around the streets near school, he suddenly ripped out a piece of loose-leaf paper and began to scrawl something on it. Then he balled it up and threw it to the floor under the seat. “Jerk,” he said a few times.
    He jumped off the bus, pretty much just stormed to the classroom, and slapped his notebooks down on his desk. Jessica wasn’t there yet. Our bus must have been first because Courtney wasn’t there, either.
    Shaking his head, Jeff looked over at me again. “I mean, Deb, his girlfriend, is okay. But so what? You wouldn’t believe the tiny, tiny place they have. I have to sleep on the couch with my feet practically in the oven. Plus, it stinks of bug spray. He keeps saying it’s all he can get because my mother is forcing him to pay for school for me, and I should go to public school instead. He says I would probably even like it better. When I got home last night my mother was on emergency shift anyway. I didn’t see her till this morning. So she’s not even there, either. So who even cares?”
    Jeff let all his breath out.
    It sounded really horrible for him. I couldn’t picture it all because things were okay at my house. It was like trying to understand what it felt like to have cancer or something. I didn’t know. I couldn’t know. But it seemed like after every visit, he hated his father more and more. It made me feel guilty that I had both my parents. “Sorry it stinks so much,” I said. “You could come to my house after school maybe. There’s food at least.”
    He shook his head. “My mom always leaves me food. She just works a lot. Plus, you don’t have any good stuff. The only comics you have are the ones I gave you.”
    It still seemed so incredibly dumb to