On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer Read Free Book Online Page B

boys gone before you turned back?" Mr. Zabrinsky was a big man, with huge, rather hairy hands. He sounded impatient.
    "Oh," Joel said, scuffing the head off of a dandelion with the toe of his sneaker, "about as far as the bridge over the river, I guess."
    "The bridge over the river!" Mrs. Zabrinsky repeated with a small gasp.
    Mr. Zabrinsky leaned toward Joel. "But he was on his way to Starved Rock. Right?"
    "Right," Joel mumbled, wishing, again, that he had remembered the first time to tell the story he had originally planned.
    "Besides," Mrs. Zabrinsky said, "Tony can't swim. He'd know better than to go near the river." She seemed to be trying to reassure herself.
    "He can't swim?" Joel asked, squinting up at her. "Really?"
    She smiled, a crooked half smile that Joel had seen a million times. "You must know that, Joel. You've gone to the pool with him ... when he's willing to go."
    Joel shrugged, tried to look away. "Well, he mostly played on the slide—or on the ropes, you know?—but he never told me he couldn't swim."
    Mrs. Zabrinsky touched Joel's arm, and without thinking he jerked away. His skin felt clammy, and he was sure the stink of the river rose from him like a vapor.
    "Maybe I shouldn't have told you," she said. "Maybe he wouldn't want you to know. He tried swimming lessons once, but he was always afraid of the water."
    Tony? Afraid? Joel pushed the thought away.
    "Is that all?" he asked, stuffing his hands into his pockets.
    "Yes," his father said. "I guess that's all." And as Joel walked away, trying to look casual, trying to remember how his feet used to move when he wasn't thinking about them, his father added to the Zabrinskys, "Let's call the park ranger. If he doesn't know anything, then we should probably drive out there, take a look for ourselves."
    "I suppose I shouldn't worry," Mrs. Zabrinsky replied, "but you know what Tony's like. I guess I worry more about him than all the rest of the kids rolled up together."
    Joel stepped through the front door into the cool darkness of the hall. Why hadn't Tony thought about his mother, about the way she worried, before he had decided to go for a swim?
     
    Joel stood in the shower, the water streaming over his skin. He had soaped three times, his hair, everything, and rinsed and soaped again. The water was beginning to grow cool, so he would have to get out soon. His mother would be cross with him for using all the hot water.
    He turned off the shower, toweled dry. As he rubbed his skin, the smell rose in his nostrils again, the dead-fish smell of the river.
    He considered getting back into the shower, but he didn't. It wouldn't help. He knew that.
    He pulled on his pajama bottoms and walked through the dark hall to his bedroom. Bobby was in bed, probably already asleep. Lights were on downstairs, and the murmur of his parents' voices floated up the stairwell. They were talking about Tony, of course. What else?
    He didn't turn on a light in his room. He simply headed for the dark shape of his bed and lay down on top of the spread, arranging his arms and legs gingerly, as if they pained him.
    After a while he heard light footsteps on the stairs, and then his mother came into his room. She sat down next to him on the bed, so close that he knew she had to be pretending not to be offended by the smell.
    "Joel," she said, "are you sure you've told us everything you know?"
    "About what?" he demanded roughly, as if he didn't understand what she meant, wishing it were possible not to understand.
    "About Tony, about what you boys did today."
    For an instant he thought about telling her. It would have been such a relief to let the words spill out, to let the choking tears come. But then he thought about having to tell the Zabrinskys, too, and the police, and about the twisted disappointment in his father's face, and he couldn't. He simply couldn't. He flopped over onto his stomach, muffling his response with the pillow.
    "I already told you.... I got tired and came