Free Fade to Black by Alex Flinn Page A

anything better to do?”
    I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t tell them about Dad or Mel or the Oreos. I kept my mouth shut and tried to think about how funny it would be when all those clocks started screaming.
    When the first alarm went off, I started giggling. Mo nudged me to shut up. But really, you could barely hear it over the Wal-Mart noise.
    The second wasn’t much more. But a minute later, they were all ringing and this Wal-Mart employee, a geeky guy in a cheesy-looking uniform, comes over and starts turning them off. He’s trying to put them back on the shelves, too. I forgot all about Dad and Mel and wanting to go home ’cause I was about busting a gut, laughing, and so was everyone else.
    The guy didn’t really notice at first because of all the clock noise. But then he turned and saw us.
    “You!” he screamed. “You four!”
    They were still ringing. But the guy didn’t seem to care anymore ’cause he was running toward us, long, nerdy arms flapping. We all got up and ran to the front of the store. The guy’s yelling, “Stop them! Security! Stop them!” and these two big guys try to block the door, but my friends all got out.
    The only one they caught was me.
    They tackled me. I was yelling, but they dragged me to some kind of store security office. The nerdy guy wanted to call the police, but once the security guys found out what they were chasing me for, they decided to just call my parents. Luckily Dad still had his cell phone back then. After they told him the problem, I asked if I could talk to him.
    “What the hell’s this about, Clinton?” he said.
    But he sounded sober, so I said, “Will you please get Mel from the house before you come here? Please.”
    When he and Mel got there, he acted like it was all some big joke, saying, “Boys will be boys.” Even when the manager got all huffy and told him I was banned from Wal-Mart for life, Dad just laughed and said, “We’ll just shop at Target then.” And when we got out to the car, he looked at me and Mel real serious and said, “This is just going to be our little secret, okay? No reason at all your mama needs to know about this—no reason at all.” That was the thing about my dad. He’d take your side in things. And even when we went to Wal-Mart a few months later for back to school, and I had to wear my baseball cap so the manager wouldn’t recognize me, I never told her.
    That Monday, when I saw my friends at lunch, I got on them for leaving without me. Brett was joking, “Hey, survival of the fittest. You gotta leave behind the weak members of the herd.”
    But Mo said, “Nah, that ain’t true. You took a fall for us, Clint buddy. We won’t forget.”
    I felt real good when Mo said that, like I’d always have good friends. But now, I know Brett was the one telling the truth. I don’t have any.
    My so-called friends are still standing ten feet away. Not one of them looks at me.
    I think maybe I’ll go to the library.
    Isn’t that just sad?
    Across the sidewalk, I notice that retard girl who accused me. I’ve seen her sitting by herself other days. But today Kendall Barker and some of the cheerleaders are around her, acting like she’s their little pet or something.
    “He’ll be okay.”
    I look up, surprised. It’s the first time anyone’s talked to me on purpose all morning.
    “What?”
    “Alex. I saw him at the hospital.”
    I don’t know the girl’s name—Jennifer something, who’s president of National Honor Society. She never talked to me before, and I never cared. Now she looks at me like I’m a fly on a pile of dog crap.
    “I thought you should know you haven’t gotten rid of him. He’ll be back in school soon, no thanks to you. He’s not going to die.”
    I gape at her. “I didn’t touch him.”
    “Save it.” She starts to walk away.
    I sit there a second, shocked and mad sort of duking it out for my feelings.
    Mad wins. “Hey!” I yell after her. “What have you got to do with