Free The Lost Songs by Caroline B. Cooney

Tenth. Want to come? Miss Veola’s a peach.” Actually, Miss Veola was more like a pickle, sharp and briny. “She loves church music,” added Lutie. “She just bought a new church and we’re pretty excited about it.”
    “She bought a church?”
    “An old movie theater in a dead strip mall. We’re taking out the first few rows of seats to make room for a piano and an electric keyboard and a whole lot of percussion, and we also have two clarinets, a sax and a couple guitars.”
    Doria’s eyes lit up.
    Lutie propelled her around the corner, toward Miss Veola’s.

    When Cliff Greene was little, and he got sick, his mama took his temperature. It was an odd quiet moment, he and his mama waiting to see what the little gauge said. She had the stick kind that went under the tongue, not the forehead kind used by the nurse at the clinic.
    But he wasn’t Cliff anymore, and his mama didn’t care what his temperature was. Train felt like the motor of his body was revved up so high that all the liquid in him had boiled off. It wasn’t normal for a human, who was supposed to be ninety-eight percent water.
    Used to be fun, being DeRade’s shadow. Stopped being fun after Nate. Really stopped once DeRade went to prison.
    Train didn’t like the idea of prison.
    He liked air and sky and wind and grass. At home, he had shifted the TV to the plug near the front door so he could sit outside on the porch, his tall stool tilted back to lean against the wall, and watch TV in the fresh air. That made him feel better, so he started doing it in school, too. The high school was built on one level, and most classrooms had a door to the hall plus a door to the outside. Train would walk in, shove a chair across the floor and prop the outside door open. He’d sit half in and half out of the room. Hot, cold, rain or shine—Train just sat there, ruining the heat or the air-conditioning foreverybody, and think about DeRade, who wasn’t going to have an open door for a long time.
    The rain stopped. Kids poured out of the foyer and spread over the paving stones like pancake batter. When Train followed, they lowered their eyes, pretending to be busy. Cried, “I’ll miss my bus!” and rushed away.
    But when Kelvin slouched out, bringing up the rear because he was slower than mud, they all grinned. Said hey and made room for him in their group.
    In kindergarten they had been the same—he and Lutie and Kelvin.
    Now they were strangers.
    Which reminded him of Doria, the new girl in town.
    He wasn’t usually attracted to keys. If you were going to break in, the fun was breaking. DeRade liked to leave a signature: a bruise, a cut or a broken window.
    But there were car keys on that key chain.
    Stealing cars was not what it used to be. More and more cars did not use keys, could not be hot-wired, or had LoJack or OnStar.
    One had been a Honda key. Probably an old Honda, because not that many kids drove new. If he had a key, he could drive the Honda when he felt like it. If Doria drove that Honda to school, he could just take her car when he wanted fresh air.
    The key chain also had a key to her house. He could open her garage when he needed wheels, and drive off. Maybe even put the car back when he was done, so he could do it again.
    He saw himself coolly moving in and out of Doria’s life and car and house like a ghost.
    But DeRade would mock him. Ghost? he’d say. One step up from a shadow. When you gonna
do
something?

6

    P eople new to Court Hill didn’t know that Chalk existed.
    The word was not on any map. It was not the name of a street. It was just the name.
    Miss Veola lived on the far edge of Chalk, and Lutie meant to go down Tenth Street so that she and Doria skirted the neighborhood. But she forgot and they were now squarely inside the community.
    Lutie loved Chalk. She loved knowing everybody, even the bad ones. She loved the comfortable wandering from one yard to the next, the easy conversations, the always-waiting sweet tea.
    But