Shift by Jennifer Bradbury Read Free Book Online Page A

garage.
    Win took a look around. “Whoops.”
    I laughed. “You forgot your sleeping bag? That’s pathetic,” I said.
    He shrugged. “Got an extra?”
    I shook my head. “Only the one my dad used in the army. You don’t want that one. We’ll have to go pick yours up.”
    “Nah,” he said. “Let’s just go to the Super Wal-Mart. I’ll buy one. It’ll be faster.”
    “Win, it takes as long to drive to Huntington as it does to get to your house,” I said.
    “Just go ask your mom if we can borrow the car,” he said.
    After persuading Mom that we really were going to Wal-Mart instead of heading off to find an after-graduation kegger, she gave us the keys. We found ourselves back on the road, the moon high overhead as we shot down the driveway and headed up the hill toward town.
    “Seriously, Win,” I said. “Your house is closer.”
    “I don’t want to go back to my house,” he said deliberately. I couldn’t say I blamed him. We curved around past a cluster of mobile homes topped by satellite dishes, each with a chained-up dog or aboveground pool in the yard.
    We took I-64 into Huntington and pulled into the parking lot, where a few cars and faces I recognized from school were already cruising the loop from the Sno-Cone Hut to the turnaround here at the Supercenter. We found a spot close to the door and passed into the buzzing glare of twenty-four-hour fluorescent lights.
    Win bought the lightest-weight bag we could find, and we were back in the car and headed for the freeway by eleven forty-five.
    “Let’s take the old highway back,” Win said.
    “Dude, we need to get back and crash. You’re the one who decided we’re leaving at eight tomorrow,” I said.
    “Just do it,” he said.
    I sighed and turned on my blinker, easing around the back of the strip mall to where the highway lay, forgotten. “Whatever.”
    The warm night air whipped through the open windows as we sped down the empty road. We passed the ball fields where Win and I had played Little League the three summers my dad coached our team. We passed the fancy neighborhood Win’s family had moved from after somebody built a newer crop of minimansionscloser to Hurricane. We passed the high school, the lights above the stadium now dark, though the outline of the tent on the football field was still visible in the moonlight.
    “Pull in here,” Win ordered as we reached the turnoff for the city park. I did. The lot was empty and quiet, the smell of chlorine heavy in the humid air.
    “How many hours do you think we spent here?” Win said.
    “Most of every summer,” I admitted. Win and I had spent a few days a week here, swimming in the tiny public pool, staring at hot lifeguards as we got older, and eating greasy cheeseburgers from the concession stand.
    “Is that the gazebo you built?” he asked, pointing toward the picnic shelter I’d built near the playground as my Eagle project.
    “Yeah,” I said.
    He smiled. “After your house, I’ll miss this place most.”
    “Why are you acting like you’re shipping out with the foreign legion? We’ll be back in two months, tops.”
    He didn’t respond immediately, just kind of waved his arm around outside the window, feeling the air, the place. “Yeah,” he said. “We’d better get some sleep.”
    Neither of us slept much. I was too keyed up, and Win kept dredging up dumb old stories from the pool or elementary school. But we stumbled into the kitchen the next morning at seven, ate the pancakes Mom made, and geared up. Even though I should have felt wiped, I was buzzing with excitement that we were finally leaving.
    In our driveway Win turned to me. “Ready to get this out of your system?” The imitation of his father was too accurate to be funny.
    My parents hugged us both, with Mom crying enough for twosets of parents. That didn’t surprise me. Win was as close to a second son as she’d ever get, and I’d heard her mutter more than once what she’d do with him if he were