The Difference Between You and Me by Madeleine George Read Free Book Online

Esther regretfully as Jesse reaches them. “Sorry.”
    “Fine by me,” Esther replies. She turns to Jesse. “They get deliveries of these big heaps of gravel out at the edges of the athletic fields and it’s our job to spread them out evenly in the ditches. To collect the rain drainage, right?” She directs the last to Huckle, who shrugs amiably.
    “Do I look like I know about rain drainage or whatnot? Am I a groundskeeper of some sort?” Huckle is wearing slouchy striped Guatemalan pants under his nubbly woven poncho-hoodie. As he talks, Jesse notices that one of his front teeth is gray. “I just check y’all in and sign y’all out. All I know about gravel is that spreading it looks like
no fun
.”
    “It’s not fun,” Esther agrees, businesslike. “But it’s meditative.”
    “You’ve done this before?” Jesse asks her.
    “Who, Meinz?” Huckle points at Esther. “This one? This one’s been here almost every week this year, haven’t you, Meinz?” Esther shrugs noncommittally. “Meinz is my main ASP buddy. If Meinz doesn’t come on a Saturday, I get lonely. What’re you in for this week, Meinz?”
    “Protesting the mandatory spirit assembly,” says Esther.
    “Hey, me too.” Jesse smiles, but Esther gives her a puzzled look.
    “Really? I didn’t see you in the office.”
    “Oh…” Somehow, suddenly, Jesse knows that the real story of her spirit assembly “protest” will not impress this girl. “I was, um, somewhere else,” she fumbles.
    “Spirit assembly?” Huckle laughs. “Now you’re even protesting spirit assemblies? What do you have against spirit assemblies, Meinz?”
    “Spirit assembly supports football. Football is a war simulation. I don’t support war in any form, real or simulated.”
    “Hard-core,” Huckle says to Jesse, jerking his thumb in Esther’s direction. Jesse nods. Esther thumps her tote bag down on the wet ground and bends to rummage in it.
    “Yeah, so, as far as instructions go for today, you got your rakes, you got your gravel, you got your ditches, youget the picture. I’ll hold on to your bags and your phones for, you know, safekeeping, and you come get me in the phys. ed. office at noon for lunch. If I’m not there, you know, check my car. Sometimes I’m in my car during certain periods of the day. Just chilling.”
    Huckle smiles a big gray-toothed Cheshire-Cat smile.
    From the tote bag, Esther produces her paperback, which she slips into the neck of her coat so that it vanishes, absorbed into the bulky mass of her clothes, and a crumpled-up floppy pink sunhat, which she shakes out to its full, twenty-inch diameter and sets on her head, tying the strings in a big bow beneath her chin. Without looking at Jesse she says, “Even on a cloudy day, UV rays can cause damage. We’ll be out there awhile.” Then she takes one of the rakes from Huckle, deposits her tote bag at his feet, and starts off purposefully toward a distant corner of the lacrosse field.
    “Implement?” Huckle says to Jesse, a note of apology in his voice, extending the second rake toward her. She trades him her phone and her backpack for the tool and heads off across the field after Esther, breaking into a jog to try to close the distance between them.
    ***
    The raking isn’t hard at the start. It’s just boring, and loud—the harsh
skritch
of the metal rakes on the jagged pebbles bores a hole into Jesse’s skull right at the back of her head.The gravel is freshly pulverized and it smells sharp and chalky, sending up clouds of stony dust whenever Jesse digs into it with the tines of her rake.
    Jesse rakes halfheartedly, distracted by watching Esther out of the corner of her eye. Esther at work is awkward and fierce, flinging the rake out and hauling it back in, flinging and hauling, over and over again. Sometimes her lips move a little as she works, as if she’s reciting something to herself, or she shakes her head suddenly, briefly, as if saying no to an invisible