Free Knights of the Hill Country by Tim Tharp Page B

like hitchhiking around the country or taking a steamboat to Malaysia, going to chef school, starting up a country-rock band. Me, I liked Billy, but him and Mr. Keller was always butting heads, and Blaine kind of gave up on him when he dropped football.
    But I guessed cutting Billy off was about the same as the way my dad cut me and my mom off. It's a hard way to go, knowing your family can split up at the drop of a hat like that. I thought back to how Blaine played in practice today, and it dawned on me that maybe Coach Huff wasn't the biggest thing motivating him after all.
    “What I'm saying is this.” Blaine was still staring hard through the windshield. “I don't want to lose my best friend the same way I lost my brother.”
    “That ain't gonna happen,” I said. I still wasn't convincedon the Misty-against-Sara deal, but there wasn't much else to say. Me and Blaine had been good buddies for a long time, but he'd never compared me to his brother right out loud like that before.
    At the furniture store, Blaine slung open the front door, strolled in, and surveyed over them rows of sofas and easy chairs about like he was the heir of a big Southern plantation, just taking a good look at what all he was fixing to inherit. He picked up a floweredy pillow, lateraled it back to me, and said, “Throw me a long bomb, Hamp.”
    When he took off down the aisle, I heaved the pillow end over end, leading him just a whisker too much. He had to make a diving catch and landed hard on this blue crushed-velvet sofa with an eight-hundred-dollar price tag on the arm. It let out a little whimpering moan that didn't exactly sound healthy.
    Una Lewis, the salesclerk, come shuffling down the aisle from the back of the store. “You boys tear anything up out here and you buy it.” Una looked like she could've been a hundred years old and had worked for Calloway Furniture ever since Rachel's granddad started the business back in the old building on Main.
    “Aw now, Una,” Blaine said. “You know your furniture's too high quality for a dainty little thing like me to hurt it.” He stood up and tossed the pillow down on the sofa. “Where's Rachel—in the back talking to her dad?”
    “Her daddy's not here,” Una said in that usual abrupt way she had. “He's over at the Wynette store.”
    Blaine said he seen the Durango parked out front so he figured Rachel had to be around somewheres, and Una said, “Ididn't say she wasn't here. I said her daddy wasn't. She's in the back office talking to Don.”
    “Uh-oh,” I said. “Rachel's getting a little flirting time in with big Don.” I was just kidding—Don Manly wasn't any kind of big, and I never thought for a second Rachel was back there flirting with him. But Blaine shot me this real dirty look and headed off for the back so fast you'd have thought he was on a mission. I had to double-step just to catch up with him.
    The office was located at the end of the storeroom, and as we got up close, you could hear Rachel's voice. Blaine stopped right beside the door and waved for me to stand next to him. He craned his head so he could hear her better.
    “I'll tell you this for sure,” she said. “I know I don't want to end up hanging around this sorry town forever. I might not even want to stay in this state.” There was something strange about her voice, kind of like she was looking to finagle Don's stamp of approval or something. That was different. Most of the time, she acted like she didn't give a powdered donut hole what anybody else thought.
    Don come back with some advice. “What I do is list goals down in writing, and then every day I look at that list and ask myself what I have to do to get there.” He was trying to sound official about it, like one of them authorities they get on daytime talk shows to tell folks why it ain't a good idea to sleep with their sisters.
    Don hadn't been much in high school, hadn't even played football, but he went up to Tulsa and got hisself an