YA The Boy on Cinnamon Street by Phoebe Stone Read Free Book Online Page B

March, and we’ve had more snow. Record snowfall this year. Anything living seems to be buried under an avalanche. Reni and I have made no progress with the pizza stalker. I haven’t seen Benny anywhere. It has crossed my mind that Newton Mancini may have left me the note. He had delivered the pizza the night before and it’s possible we didn’t see the note that night. I’m thinking, what do I know about Newton? Well, my grandma is friends with his mom and she says Newton has diabetes. And I know they call him the Valentine Man at school because on Valentine’s Day, every girl at South gets a valentine card in her locker from Newton. Even the teachers and the librarians and the secretaries. So this could very well be Newton.
    This afternoon my grandma is watching that movie Thelma and Louise again. My grandma and grandpa watch that movie a lot. It was my mom’s favorite movie. I think she named me Louise because of it. It’s a really dumb movie because in the end Thelma and Louise drive off a cliff and die. Always at the end, Grandma and Grandpa press their heads together and they both start in with the big crying festival.
    Today when the phone rings, Grandma stops the video, and Thelma’s face is caught in a strange blur just at the edge of the cliff before they drive off it.
    I pick up the phone. It’s on a small table next to the couch. “Hello,” I say.
    “Hello, Louise, it’s your dad. How are you doing, sweetheart? Miss you.”
    “Fine,” I say.
    “In school? Doing your homework?”
    “Yup,” I say.
    “My stepdaughter, you know her — Dearie — she says seventh grade is a bust. Tough stuff, I guess. Is that right?”
    “Yup,” I say.
    “Well, you hang in there, kiddo. You’re gonna knock ’em dead. Okay? Miss you,” he says again.
    “Okay,” I say.
    “Hey, is your grandma there? I’d like to talk to her. She needs to put the house on Cinnamon Street up for sale. It shouldn’t be sitting there empty. It’s up to her. Have you rented it yet? I mean, if you and she don’t want the house, you could sell it to me. I’d be glad to buy it. I want to be the first person to know. Okay? After I buy it, I’ll get it rented that very day. We should take care of this, honey. Like grown-ups. Right? So let me speak to your grandma.”
    “Grandma,” I say, “it’s my dad. He wants to talk to you.”
    “I’m about to take a bath, Louise. My bath is ready,” my grandma says, and she walks away down the back hall and closes several doors.
    “She’s taking a bath,” I say.
    “You tell her to call me. We need to talk. She doesn’t call me back, Louise. We need to clear this up. And you’re coming to the city to see us sometime soon, sweetheart. Right? We’ll pick you up at the airport. Dearie really enjoys your company. Okay?”
    “Okay,” I say.
    “All right, then?” he says. “Okay?”
    “Yup,” I say.
    “We’ll talk soon. Okay?”
    “Okay,” I say and I hang up the phone.
    When Grandma comes back in the room, she’s got cream on her face and it’s thick and white and it looks like a mask. Her hair is pulled back really tightly in a hair clip, like that hair clip is holding all of her together. Like if you took off the hair clip, everything about my grandma would scatter.
    She rewinds the video now, the movie of Thelma and Louise. It makes a fast hissing noise. We see Thelma and Louise backing away from the cliff. Away. Away. In superfast motion, they take back everything they did in a frenzy until we get to the beginning again, where Thelma and Louise look like two normal smiling housewives. Now my grandma zips the old-fashioned portable TV back into the suitcase where she keeps it on a shelf. Then we both sit there on the couch, staring at that stupid suitcase. Soon my grandma throws her arms around me and rocks me back and forth, back and forth. I have a feeling the rocking is comforting her, while all it does is make me very very dizzy.

Chapter
Nine
     
    Grandma wants