On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer Read Free Book Online

"That hurt!" He rubbed the top of his head.
    "Everything hurts," Joel mumbled, but now the anger was replaced by shame. What was he on Bobby about? The poor little kid was only trying to help. Joel began pulling the circulars off the stack, one at a time, snapping them into place inside the fold of the papers, rolling the papers to ready them for throwing. Everything hurts, he repeated to himself, except maybe being dead. Being dead's probably the only thing that's easy.
    The thought made his skin go cold and tingly.
    "What's wrong, Joel?" Bobby asked. "Why do you look like that?" His own pain forgotten, Bobby was staring with enormous green eyes.
    "Nothing," Joel said, but the word came out sounding squeezed. "If you're going to help, start putting the papers in the bag."
    Bobby began bagging the papers, but he didn't take his eyes off Joel's face.
    "Watch what you're doing," Joel snapped, pulling the anger around himself again like a cloak. "We've gotta get this show on the road."
    Bobby nodded sharply and set to loading the rolled papers into the bag as fast as Joel could get them ready.
    Joel stuffed and rolled, the fury taking over again, but this time he knew whom he wanted to punch. It was all Tony's fault. All of it! Tony knew what a poor swimmer he was. He had to have realized the risks. And now he had gone off and left Joel to answer for him. And what was he going to say?
    Tony's parents would probably be asking questions by the time he got home from his route. Tony isn't home, Joel. Where could he be? You're the last one who saw him ... alive.
    "Damn it all, anyway!" Joel cried, pushing the rest of the stack of papers off the porch. "I'm sick of this stinking paper route."
    Bobby was sitting back on his heels, his eyes in danger of swallowing up his face. He peered over the edge of the porch and then up at Joel. "You squashed three of Mommy's purple things," he said.
    Joel looked, too. The papers were lying in the middle of his mother's petunia bed.
    "Do you want me to get the papers back?" Bobby asked. "I think if we brush them off they'll still be okay."
    "All right," Joel consented. "Get them back."
    Bobby climbed down the steps and then up again. He peered cautiously over the stack of papers he carried. "They're okay, Joel," he said, laying them down reverently, as though they were jewels.
    Joel shook his head, trying to dispel the red fog that had taken possession of his brain. If he could get his hands on Tony now, he would ... But that was ridiculous. What would he do? What could anybody do? Beat Tony up?
    At the thought he let out a choking guffaw, half laughter, half sob.
    Bobby was watching him again, his face wary, his lower lip clenched between small, white teeth. "Are you okay, Joel?" he asked.
    "Yeah," Joel said. "I'm okay." He went back to preparing the papers. "I'm alive, aren't I?"
     
    The paper route seemed endless. Bobby rode behind Joel on the bicycle seat and chattered the whole way. Joel tried to listen, with half an ear anyway, but he couldn't. With each thunk of a paper on a porch, he heard, instead, Tony's voice, challenging, teasing. "I'll bet you can't get one in the middle of Mrs. McCullough's hanging geraniums. I'll bet you can't clip the Smiths' cat. Why don't you...?"
    Joel wanted to yell at Tony, to tell him to shut up, but even Bobby would think he was crazy if he started yelling at a voice inside his own head.
    Why did he feel so responsible, as though he had pushed Tony in? Why did he always have to feel responsible for everything that happened? If they had gone climbing on the bluffs and he, Joel, had fallen, Tony wouldn't have blamed himself. Would he?
    Tony had said once that Joel was like an old grandmother, fretting all the time. Well, Tony ought to see him now. He would laugh.
    At the thought of Tony laughing, Joel almost smiled. He and Tony always had so much fun together. Besides the tree house they were building this summer, they had a lot of other projects going. They