The Depth of Darkness (Mitch Tanner #1) by L.T. Ryan Read Free Book Online

loudly and often.
    “Can you at least call me Bernie?” He pushed
his thick glasses up his nose and fell onto the seat.
    A cloud of dust shot up and fell back down
through the rays of sunlight that slipped in between the giant two
story houses.
    “Glad that storm passed,” she said.
    He glanced at her over the rim of his
glasses. “We’re talking about the weather now?”
    She gave him a cross look. “What’s that
mean?”
    “No idea. Something my mom said to her
boyfriend.” Beans grabbed his bag off her lap and pulled out a tube
of lotion. He squeezed a dime-sized circle on the back of his hand
and rubbed it in.
    Debby held out her hands, palms facing down,
in front of him.
    “What?” he asked.
    “Can I have some?”
    “You don’t need it.”
    “Why not?”
    “You know why.”
    “Just because I’m not black doesn’t mean I
don’t like putting your pretty smelling lotion on my hands.”
    “I don’t wear pretty smelling lotion,” he
said to a chorus of laughter behind them. “I’ve got dry skin.”
    Debby glanced over her shoulder and narrowed
her eyes at the brown-haired boy. A slight shake of her head was
all it took to make him stop. And what he did, the others did. She
kind of relished the power she now had over him.
    “Here,” Beans said.
    “Why thank you, Bernard,” she said, smiling
at him as he handed the tube over. They were two oddball peas that
had fallen from their original pods and made one of their own out
of the scraps the world threw at them. Without each other, school
would have been a miserable experience. Together, they could take
on anything and anyone.
    The bus completed its tour through the fancy
neighborhood and hit the main road to school. Five to ten minutes,
on average, is all they had before being forced to put up with a
day confined behind their desks. To Debby, it was so boring. To
which her mother would respond, skip those grades and you won’t be
bored. On so many levels, Debby was sure that would be the case.
Spending half a day crammed inside one’s own locker had to be a
rush, right?
    The old stinky Cheese Wagon clanked to a stop
in front of the gymnasium. Debby and Beans waited their turn and
exited. Once on the sidewalk, they turned right and walked toward
the back of the bus, through an invisible cloud of diesel
fumes.
    “That stinks,” Beans said.
    “You stink,” Debby said.
    He pulled out his inhaler and took a puff.
“It’s not good for my asthma.”
    “You say that about everything .” And
he did. Running, jumping, climbing, standing, squatting, peeing
(she wasn’t so sure about that one), playing video games. They all
gave him asthma attacks.
    “I do not. Those fumes are—” His body lurched
forward. His knees and elbows scraped the pavement. His glasses
flew through the air and landed a few feet in front of him. The
sunlight fractured as it passed through the broken lens and cast
several golden beams of light of varying sizes on the ground.
    Debby spun around. The brown haired boy stood
there with a broad grin on his face.
    “You ever do that again you little freak, and
I’ll beat his four-eyed face into the ground.”
    She dropped her bags and shoved him in the
stomach. “Get out of here, piss pants!”
    The boy spat in Beans’s direction, then
turned and jogged off. Debby looked around. No one paid any
attention to the situation. It didn’t surprise her. To most of the
world, she and Beans were invisible. She extended her right arm,
then her middle finger and shook it in the boy’s direction.
    “Don’t do that,” Beans said. “You’ll get
suspended.”
    “I don’t care,” she said, turning around and
offering him her hand. All fingers extended this time. He reached
up and she pulled back until he was back on his feet. “Besides,
none of them wanted to help, so it was meant for all of them.”
    The school bell rang. Lingering kids ran
through any available door.
    “Shoot,” she said.
    “Is that the final bell?” he