Taming the Star Runner by S. E. Hinton Read Free Book Online Page B

it.
    No, she didn’t even know he’d written a book, much less sent it off. She knew he wrote, sure, but seemed to think it was some weird phase he was going through, though after all these years you’d think…
    No, it was his book and his letter, no matter what it said. Nobody needed to know anything. Just him and somebody in New York. For a second he wondered who…
    Ken was grilling hot dogs on the Jenn-Air.
    â€œAnything up?”
    â€œNaw.” Travis wished Ken weren’t such a hard ass about letting him drink anything. He sure could use a slug of bourbon. “She just wanted to make sure everything was okay. Was I eating right, you know.”
    â€œI hope you lied.” Ken took the mustard knife away from Christopher, who was trying to mustard the hot dogs still on the grill.
    â€œYeah, I did.” He remembered something. “She said to say hi. She called you Kenny, made you sound like a little kid.”
    â€œShe always did—called Tim, Timmy too. He swore when he had a kid, the name’d be something she couldn’t put a
y
on.”
    â€œI thought she picked my name.”
    â€œShe did, but Tim had to approve it. He was sure you were going to be a boy … She got the name out of a book, didn’t she? The MacDonald mystery series?”
    â€œNo,
Old Yeller
. The dog book.”
    â€œTim used to tease her about all the books she read.”
    Mom reading? He hadn’t seen her read anything except
Reader’s Digest
and
National Enquirer
and those books that always had a picture of a pirate ripping the shirt off some girl. That wasn’t
real
reading.
    â€œYour mom was a real sweet girl. Pretty too. She thought Tim hung the moon.”
    Hung the moon. What a weird expression. Travis had never heard it.
    â€œShe’s fat now,” Travis said. He tried to think of Mom young, pretty, and reading, and couldn’t do it. Young, pretty, and reading and thinking someone hung the moon … Obviously she thought a lot more of Stan than Travis could, but he wasn’t any moon hanger.
    â€œCome here,” Ken said suddenly. He picked up Christopher and sat him on one of the high barstools at the center island table.
    â€œPut your hand next to Chris’s, open your fingers. See?”
    Travis stared at the two hands, wondering … then he saw. Christopher’s hand was a miniature of his own. The shape of the fingers, the set of the thumbs—Travis was startled to see even a lot of similarity in the palm prints.
    â€œWow.”
    â€œHe’s got Teresa’s coloring and features, but my details: Ears, hands, feet.”
    â€œLet me see yours.”
    Again, an amazing resemblance. Travis thought: That’s how my hand will look. But surely not that old.
    â€œDo I remind you of my dad?”
    â€œJust in looks. You’re a lot quieter. Tim was a very … vivid personality.”
    â€œYou guys get along?”
    â€œOnce a year.”
    â€œWhy’d you let me come here?”
    Ken met his eyes. Ken had light brown eyes, clear, like iced tea with the sun shining through.
    â€œWhy’d you want to come?”
    And Travis knew exactly when the same thought went through both their minds: I thought you’d be Tim.
    Federal Express, he thought, I should have told her to Federal-Express it. He couldn’t eat, he’d hardly slept, and he couldn’t expect the letter for two more days, anyway. It would have cost a lot of money, he wasn’t sure how much, but he could have hocked his tape player—no, calm down, whatever the letter said it would say the same thing two days from now.
    He went directly to the barn after he’d put in his time at school. The house was more peaceful, now that Christopher was gone, but Ken was in a bad mood. He was ticked off because Christopher had left saying a word he hadn’t said before; Travis figured if Ken had cable TV like any normal person the kid would