Free Scam by Lesley Choyce Page A

just trying to be friendly.”
    I didn’t know what to say. “Yeah, that’s okay. Sorry. I was a little preoccupied.”
    “I’m Lindsey.”
    “I’m Josh.”
    “Short for Joshua?”
    “I guess.” Nobody had ever called me Joshua that I could recall, except for my mom when I was really young.
    “Lindsey is short for Lindsey. The name has something to do with a tree on an island. Scottish, I think.”
    Why was she telling me this? I wondered. Maybe she was a nutcase. I was thinking of walking away. But I suddenly realized that for the first time since my mom died, I wasn’t thinking gloomy thoughts.
    “What kind of tree?” I asked, feeling foolish even as I said it.
    “I don’t know,” she said. “I should look it up sometime. I just picture this beautiful, big tree on a small island in the ocean.”
    She had a big smile now, this cute and friendly nutcase of a girl.
    “So?” she asked.
    “So what?”
    “Where are you going on a beautiful day like this?”
    I almost told her, but I held back. “Nowhere in particular.”
    “Can I walk nowhere in particular with you?”
    “If you want,” I said, realizing how stupid that sounded. But I think I smiled just then.
    “That’s good. At first I thought you couldn’t smile. I thought maybe you had something wrong with your mouth.”
    “I don’t have anything wrong with my mouth,” I said.
    “That’s good,” Lindsey said.
    So we walked. And we talked about silly things. And I knew I was going to be late for the funeral, but right then I didn’t care.
    If you are with me so far, you are thinking, Hey, this is like some really cheesy Hollywood film about a messed-up kid who meets a beautiful girl on the street who changes his life.
    Well, it is and it isn’t.
    After some more walking, and her running commentary about birds, clouds, trees, oceans, faraway places and hairstyles, she suddenly stopped. “I gotta go now,” she said. “But I’m hoping we can do this again. Can I give you a hug?”
    I smiled but didn’t say a thing.
    And she wrapped her arms around me and squeezed. It felt really, really good.
    And then she grabbed my hand and said my name once—“Joshua.” Then she turned and walked away with a bouncy kind of walk.
    And so I ended up standing there. Smiling like an idiot.
    A few seconds more of feeling stunned and then I took a deep breath and remembered where I was going. I took a few more steps before I realized my wallet was missing.

Chapter Three
    I stopped dead in my tracks as it sunk in. That girl had stolen my wallet when she hugged me. What a totally rotten thing to do. I should have known there was something wrong, really wrong, with the way she came on to me. I felt anger welling up inside.
    I sat down on a low wall to try to sort out all the weird feelings pulsing through me. Then a voice inside me tried to calm me down. What had I really lost? A wallet with all of five dollars in it and my high school id. Nothing much at all.
    And then I remembered what else. Damn her .
    I got up and started running in the direction I had come from. If it took all day, I would find her.
    At first I thought there would be no way for me to track her down, but it turned out she wasn’t far from where we had met. I found her as she was walking out of a corner store. She saw me running toward her and turned to go back into the store.
    I went in and confronted her. “Why did you do that?” I snarled, having a hard time catching my breath.
    “Do what?” she asked.
    The guy behind the counter was looking at us now. “Hey. Take it outside.”
    Lindsey walked back outside, and I followed her. I half expected her to run, but she didn’t. She stopped on the sidewalk and looked me directly in the eyes.
    “You stole my wallet,” I insisted.
    Then she did a strange thing. She smiled. “You mean this?” she said, holding it up.
    I grabbed it from her. “How could you do that?”
    “Sorry, it’s what I do.”
    I flipped it open and pulled out