Stranded by J. T. Dutton Read Free Book Online Page B

with the greeting famous people use to flash the paparazzi—a split finger point. Ernie didn’t seem to know what the fingers meant, and he slowly cleared his throat.
    “Ernie, this is my cousin from Des Moines.” Natalie introduced us, explaining that I was from the city and that was why I made funny hand signals and wore garish boots.
    Except for when I was with Katy and a dare was involved, I mostly avoided bus drivers. I walked to class in Des Moines, stopping at Starbucks to prepare my faculties. Ernie chortled and winked at Natalie and me as if Des Moines was the funniest place he had ever heard a person had come from.
    I accidentally winked back.
    Boldness is not a good way to handle friendly old men.
    When I am photographed I flinch so embarrassingly that I devised the strategy of poking bunny ears behind other people’s heads to get through the agony. I had so many things on my mind—ideas about how to protectNatalie—I couldn’t quite summon the fake friendliness to charm the old codger. Ernie, in response to my wink, shifted gears and hit the gas, and the bus lurched into motion. He sent me careening up the aisle, bypassing Natalie by one seat.
    I flew by her mostly on purpose, not wanting to cramp her style— if you call a Fair Isle sweater and a plaid skirt style. We hadn’t fought quite as much since I returned from church, but we hadn’t found our inner Bulgarian chefs again either.
    There were only four people on the bus older than twelve: my cousin, a heavyset blonde boy with strangely cut bangs near the back, a clone of him in the front, and a girl who might be Amish. The rest of the seats were filled with elementary school kids.
    The Amish girl peered at me.
    She had nice skin, very rosy like Natalie’s.
    The boys seemed cute.
    There were differences between the way they were dressed and the way I was, but not of the extreme kind Katy implied when we joked on my driveway in Des Moines. Thinking of clothing trends made me wonder if Facebook was still a “thing.” So far from my usual world, a fad could come and go and I wouldn’t know. A person like me needed to live in the city just to stay even.
    Natalie, meanwhile, shifted toward her window and pulled her diary from her bag. I recognized it as the one that had been sitting on her desk. I guessed that it contained all the details of Bearded Boyfriend and maybe how Natalie had managed to give birth to Baby Grace all on her own—which had to have been quite a story, definitely edgier than the shopping lists and descriptions of Pastor Jim that had sedated me when I read it a year earlier. I had given the journal a Most Boring Book award because Natalie thought that her inner self would be interested in the news that she had ironed three of her shirts. Now I wondered if it was safe for her to have her private materials out in public where anybody could read them or maybe send them to the National Enquirer .
    Just to be sure she wasn’t exposing herself too obviously, I peered over her shoulder.
    I read the greeting “Dearest Journal” before she stowed the book in her pack and zipped the pocket. Her expression, when she turned, was not one of her friendlier ones, and might cause ugly little lines to form when she reached thirty—unless she moisturized responsibly. Before I could explain that I had just been stretching, doing a little bus yoga, and not peeking, a blond girl boarded and took the place next toNatalie. The girl had to be Sherry Wimple, the friend who had unknowingly made dirty promises to a ravenous vampire two days earlier. Natalie hadn’t talked about befriending anyone else. I shifted one leg over the other while I waited for the introduction that Natalie decided not to make. Instead, she and Little Blondie gossiped about youth group. Little Blondie clapped her hands, behaving very cheerleaderish. She was obviously a member of the perky set.
    I leaned my head against the window and listened to how wise Pastor Jim was, how