The Islanders by Katherine Applegate Read Free Book Online Page B

starting to say, Hey, Aisha, are you going out with that Christopher guy yet? Yet . Like it has to happen. Well, it doesn’t have to happen.”
    â€œBut, you have to admit—”
    Aisha shook her head. “No, I don’t have to admit. I’m not just waiting around here for you to come and sweep me off my feet. I go out with white guys as well as black guys, so it’s not just like, hey, check out my skin, now you have to go out with me.”
    Christopher nodded. “You know, I’m starting to see something in what you’re saying. I think you’re absolutely right. We needed to know each other better, see, because if I had knownyou better, I’d have known you were a bitch.” He reached for the flowers. “I’ll take those.”
    â€œTake them,” Aisha said, relinquishing the bouquet.
    Just then Aisha’s mother opened the door and stepped outside. “Is there some reason I hear shouting out here?”
    â€œI’m very sorry, ma’am,” Christopher said smoothly. “My name is Christopher Shupe. These are for you.” He handed the flowers to Aisha’s mother.
    Her mother took the flowers and smiled. “They’re lovely. I like to have flowers in the house when we have guests. Thank you. I keep wanting to grow a garden, but I never seem to have the time. Maybe next spring.”
    â€œActually, ma’am, there are things you should be doing now if you want a garden for next season. You need to be putting in bulbs, you know, for daffodils, tulips—”
    â€œTulips?” Mrs. Gray said, her eyes lighting up. “I love tulips. But I just don’t have the time, and there aren’t any landscaping companies that operate on the island.”
    â€œThere’s a guy I know who’d do it on either a per-job basis or by the hour,” Christopher said. “Me.”
    â€œMother,” Aisha warned.
    â€œAren’t you in school?” her mother asked.
    â€œNo, ma’am. I’ve graduated, and now I’m working to put college money together. I cook nights down at Passmores’ andI do repairs around the building for my landlady, but I have several days available.”
    â€œTulips,” Mrs. Gray repeated, her eyes wandering over the yard.
    â€œNext spring, just like clockwork,” Christopher promised.
    â€œYou have a deal, young man,” Mrs. Gray said. She turned to go back inside. “And thanks for these flowers.”
    Aisha shot Christopher a poisonous look. He grinned back.
    â€œFate,” he said.
    â€œI don’t believe in fate,” Aisha said, closing the door in his face.
    Â 
Lucas Cabral
    At the Youth Authority we slept in barracks, a dozen bunkbeds to a room, twenty-four guys in all. The guy in the bunk above me had tried to poison his father with Drano. The guy in the next bed over had sold LSD to some eight-year-olds. So, you see, even though by Chatham Island standards I was a bad guy, my fellow cellmates weren’t real impressed.
    I spent the first year being bitter. At my dad for being such a hard case. At Claire for never once writing or visiting. I figured that was the least she could have done. At life in general. But after a while, if you’re any kind of a human being, you get past bitterness.
    I started reading a lot. Used to help some of the other guys keep up with the lame attempts the YA made to deal with our educations. I grew up a little.
    One day I was looking through the Weymouth Times and happened on a picture. Zoey. Zoey Passmore, it said right under the photo of her smiling nervously and standing down by the ferry, the place where she had been the only one of all my supposed friends to say a kind word.
    Not that I’m bitter.
    The article with the picture said she was one of threeWeymouth High kids who had been selected to contribute articles to the paper’s youth page. I read the two she did when they came out. An interview with