Free Spring Rain by Gayle Roper Page A

Nobody knows how you can eat worms three times a day.”
    Then Johnny’d laugh and scratch his belly, and Worm would laugh with him.
    People mocking him was nothing new. In fact, he couldn’t remember a time in his life when he didn’t get mocked. But Johnny never hit him. Never. Once Johnny even told Dooley, self-proclaimed king of theircell block, to leave Worm alone and pick on someone his own size. Dooley picked on Johnny for a few minutes, and Johnny never defended him like that again. But he still remembered that day with pride. No one had ever stood up for him before. Or since.
    He smiled in the darkness. Yeah, Johnny had been his best friend. Ever. He shrugged and admitted the truth. He had been his only friend. Ever. And Johnny’d shared his secret with him, or at least part of it.
    He still felt bad that Johnny got iced in the shower. To die naked must be very upsetting. At least he knew he’d be embarrassed if it happened to him.
    Johnny was the reason he was here. The secret. The treasure. That was why he stood in the night and watched through windows. That was why he was going to be rich. Nobody’d make fun of him ever again.
    Nobody’d ignore him ever again.
    Nobody’d beat on him ever again.
    He’d been watching for the past several nights, and he was finally getting a feel for schedules and routines. It made him feel professional, not like the two-bit crook he’d been before. He shook his head at how stupid he’d been. No wonder he got caught. But that was then. This was now.
    Every night they all gathered in that upstairs bedroom where the guy with AIDS lived. It was like they were saying good-bye to him in case he wasn’t there in the morning or something. Talk about spooky.
    Personally he wouldn’t have nothing to do with an AIDS guy. What if you caught it or something? Then where were you? He shuddered. Even the treasure wouldn’t do you no good then.
    Tonight the doctor wasn’t up there, but some new guy was. The brother? Probably. Clooney said the AIDS guy had a twin. It must be weird being a twin. Like looking in the mirror all the time.
    He knew lots about these Whartons because he had asked careful questions of the people he met on the beach, especially Clooney, the guy with the metal detector. Clooney liked to talk like no one he’d ever met. In the joint everyone kept to themselves most of the time, and growing up, no one talked to him either. His dad hated him and his mother thought he was just a poor joke.And that was one of the nicest things she said.
    He flinched in the cool night air as he heard her voice just like she was standing in the driveway with him.
    “Get out of my sight, you little creep,” she yelled. “I don’t want nothing to do with you. You’re so ugly you make me sick!”
    Since he looked like her—everybody said he did—he was never sure why she yelled that all the time. But it always made him feel bad, so he stayed out of her way as much as he could.
    He looked over his shoulder, half expecting to see her even though he knew she couldn’t be here. He’d stood by her grave when she got buried. He’d smiled through the whole service. If only she’d stop living in his mind like she stopped living on the earth, he’d be very happy.
    He heard some barks from that upstairs bedroom and smiled, Ma forgotten. He liked that little dog. It had come with the guy who was probably the brother. He’d almost let it out of the car himself after the guy went inside without it, but the lady came out and did it first. He hoped the dog lived in the house, not the garage. He didn’t want anyone or anything protecting Leigh-Leigh.
    Clooney told him she didn’t have nobody but the lady and the AIDS guy and the kid, and only the kid lived with her in the garage, so he wasn’t worried. What was a kid? It was good that Clooney was a blabbermouth.
    Not that he really wanted to know lots of the stuff Clooney told him about the Whartons with their fancy painted house and