Free The Pricker Boy by Reade Scott Whinnem

confused.
    “I need a day. I have something to do.” They all stare at me. “Isn’t it … I think that it’s going to rain. Isn’t it supposed to rain this afternoon?”
    Emily shakes her head no.
    “Look, I just need a day, okay? We’ll go in the morning.”
    She shrugs and walks back down the path. “Okay, Stucks. We go in the morning.”

“N o,” Pete says.
    He and I are following the edge of the pond where the shore hooks around the cove. Pete’s wearing his jean jacket, even though it’s a little too muggy to be wearing a jacket. I suppose that makes sense. He wears that jacket even when it’s too cold for something so light, so it’s only logical for him to wear it when the weather gets too warm.
    “Why?” I ask him. “I don’t get it. Why don’t you just come with us? I asked them to wait so you could come.”
    “I told you, I’m never hanging out with those kids again.”
    I’m following along behind him, placing my feet exactly where he places his. I know the rocks along the shore as well as he does, well enough not to stumble, but if I justfollow his exact steps then I don’t even have to think about it. “We don’t have to make a big deal out of it,” I tell him. “You just come along.”
    Pete steps across the pile of rocks in the shallow water in front of Hank Paulding’s place. Hank collects rocks each fall, claiming that one day he’s going to build a stone dock twenty-five feet out into the pond. “Rocks don’t rot!” he once told me. Pete and I told him that when he finally gathered enough rocks we’d help him make his dock. Hank’s never going to get enough rocks to build a dock, but our offer was sincere. If by some miracle he ever did get around to doing it, we’d jump into the water to build with him.
    One of Hank’s rocks wobbles under Pete’s foot and then mine, but we’re ready for it and compensate by leaning out slightly over the water. “You think that Ronnie’ll be happy to see me?”
    “I’ll take care of Ronnie,” I say.
    We reach Pete’s backyard and walk up to the house. We sit under the overhang that serves as their back porch.
    “What’s the point?” Pete says, putting his feet up on the woodpile and lighting a cigarette. “This place’ll sell before the summer’s half over. I’ll be gone. It’s a waste of time. I don’t want to see them, they don’t want to see me, so there’s no point in starting something that was finished a year ago.”
    “Come on, please!”
    “No.”
    “As a favor to me? I don’t want you to go without at least … hell, I don’t want you to go at all. It’ll suck around here in the wintertime without you to hang out with.”
    Pete doesn’t say anything.
    “Please,” I ask.
    “Have you forgotten the English language? Do you know what the word ‘no’ means?”
    I don’t respond.
    “Look at me!” he shouts. “What does ‘no’ mean, Stucks? What does it mean?”
    “‘No’ means ‘no,’” I say meekly.
    We sit quietly for a while. Pete doesn’t even smoke his cigarette. He just lets it dangle between his fingers. We watch the pond. Emily was right. It isn’t raining, but it is overcast. The water is still and gray. Gray above and gray below.
    “How about you come with me?” he asks. “I’m heading out tonight, catching a ride with Craig and Dean. There’s a party down in the sandpit behind Thorwall’s far cornfield. Dean’s picking up a keg.”
    “I dunno.”
    “You don’t have to drink. It wouldn’t hurt you, but you don’t have to.”
    “How would we get home?”
    “Craig. Or if we had to we could walk it, cut through the woods. It would take a while, but that might be cool too. It’s not like your parents would notice. You get home at dawn,flop down in the bushes somewhere. They wouldn’t know shit about it.”
    “Dean doesn’t like me,” I say. Dean scares me, but I don’t tell Pete that.
    “Forget about Dean,” Pete says, waving his hand. Ashes fall onto his jeans,