Free Sweet 16 to Life by Kimberly Reid Page B

now, when I get off the bus from school.”
    â€œYeah? I must not have been working those other times,” Eddie says.
    If it was anyone else, I’d think he was reading me, but from what MJ has told me, Eddie didn’t just fail in college because he was a slacker. He probably believes me and really thinks he wasn’t working those times, even though this is his regular shift.
    â€œYou have any Bubble Yum?” I ask. “I wanted to buy some for MJ because I’m always mooching off her. You know what her favorite flavor is?”
    â€œReally? I’ve never seen MJ with gum.”
    He’s right; it is a bad cover story. He’s reading my habits and my lies—I’m way off my game. Thanks to Marco messing with my head. And my heart.
    â€œIt was only once or twice I bummed off her. It’s not like she has a Bubble Yum addiction or anything.”
    â€œWell, I know she likes grape slushes.”
    â€œYou know MJ pretty well, don’t you?” I say, finally getting the opening I was so ineptly looking for. “Things must be going great for y’all, huh?”
    â€œOh yeah, me and MJ are definitely tight. I never thought she’d be my kind of girl, her being all roughneck and everything. I was chasing pretty girls around campus and didn’t know what a real woman would be like.”
    Unbelievably, he says this all dreamy-like. I suppress a smile.
    â€œMJ is about as real as it gets,” I say, putting the pack of grape gum, two protein bars, and Lana’s twenty on the counter.
    â€œYeah. Ain’t nothing pink and frilly about her. You never know what you want until it hits you.”
    â€œ It hits you? You mean like—”
    â€œNah, man . . . it’s like . . . you know,” he says.
    Like most guys, he fumbles the four-letter L word like it can’t possibly relate to him, so I let him off the hook.
    â€œRight, I know. And MJ won’t ever hear it from me,” I promise as he gives me my change.
    On my way out, I give Crazy Moses the protein bars. I’ll probably regret it the next time I see him when I’ll have to explain why I can’t give him free coffee or Power Bars now.
    â€œYou can pay me back when you have a little extra,” I tell him, hoping he’ll remember I said it and won’t expect freebies whenever he sees me. I know he’ll never have a little extra. Some panhandlers probably make more than I ever did at Treets, but Crazy Moses isn’t one of them. People generally cross the street to avoid him; he scares off too many people to actually make any money.
    â€œNot to worry,” he says and nods, taking the bars. I’m never sure what this means because, outside of demanding money, food, or coffee from people, I’ve never heard Moses say anything but those three words. He says them all the time, whether he’s pushing his cart up the street, panhandling on the corner, or sitting on the sidewalk in front of Seoul BBQ enjoying someone’s donated leftovers—you’ll hear him repeating those same three words over and over. I always figured he was trying to convince himself, not the rest of us, but sometimes I wonder.
    I should take Moses’s advice, but that’ll never happen. Right now, I’m worried about MJ. Either she’s lying about things between her and Eddie not being serious or the poor guy is completely deluded. The way he kept looking all stupid-in-love whenever I mentioned MJ, that delusion theory is not improbable. But there are other ways to get information than from the source, and sometimes they’re even more reliable than the source. This is especially true when a would-be informant thinks of gossip as a sport and she’s training for the gold. On my walk home, I call in a pizza order and then text Tasha to come over for a slice in about fifteen minutes.
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    Before I go home, I make a stop at Ada Crawford’s house, the weight of