Free Bang by Norah McClintock Page A

says half the time he’s positive she can tell what he’s thinking. I look at Leah now and wonder what she knows. I look at JD too. He’s grinning at her. I bet he’s confident that he’s snowing her. I hope he’s right.
    â€œDon’t make a mess out there while you’re cleaning up,” Leah says. Boy, does she ever know JD. “You know how Dad is.”
    We go from the kitchen to the garage. Our bikes are dry. There’s no mud on them, nothing at all on them that I can see. But JD fills a bucket with soapy water anywayand hands me a sponge. We set to work washing down our bikes. We rinse them. JD fills another bucket with soapy water. We wash them again and rinse them again. Altogether we soap and rinse three times before JD is satisfied. He looks at me and says, “It’s going to be okay. I already told you. Nobody saw. Nobody knows.”
    He’s forgetting one thing.
I
saw.
I
know.

Chapter Two
    The guy died. I’m not surprised. Also, I’m relieved. I can’t believe I feel that way, but I do. I’m actually relieved because if he’s dead, that means he can’t say anything.
    I’m staring at the TV . The news is over. The guy’s death was the last item and now the weather guy is doing his thing. In the kitchen, the phone rings. A moment later, my mother appears and hands me the cordless. She says, “It’s JD.”
    The first words out of JD’s mouth are “You should get a cell phone.”
    Right. “You gonna pay for it?” I say.
    As usual, he doesn’t answer. Instead he says, “You heard, right? It’s like I told you, we have nothing to worry about.”
    I realize he’s talking about the dead guy. He must have seen the news too.
    â€œYou’re okay, right, Q?” he says. “You’re cool, right?”
    â€œYeah,” I say. I’m thinking, They said the guy is dead. But they didn’t say exactly
when
he died. Was it before the paramedics arrived? I can’t believe I’m thinking it, but I am—it would be best if he died before the paramedics showed up. But what if he didn’t? What if he was alive long enough to talk to them? What would he have told them? What
could
he have told them?
    â€œHey, Q, you haven’t talked to anyone, have you?” JD says.
    â€œNo,” I say. But JD isn’t satisfied.
    â€œWhy don’t you come over here?” he says. “Spend the night.”
    â€œIt’s all good,” I insist. “Really.”
    JD is...
was
...my best friend. We’ve slept over at each other’s places since kindergarten. Boy, the things we’ve done. But tonight there’s no way I want to go to his house. No way I want to be anywhere near him.
    â€œI’ll see you tomorrow,” I say.
    â€œI’ll pick you up,” he says, meaning he’ll swing by my house on the way to school. “First thing,” he says.
    At first I can’t sleep. I keep seeing it and hearing it and even tasting it. How can you sleep when you’ve seen a thing like that? The next thing I know, my mother is hammering on my door, telling me to get up or I’m going to be late. Telling me my lunch is in the fridge. Telling me she’s leaving for work now and if I’m late and I get a detention—
again
—and have to be late for my after-school job and get fired and have no money for the stuff I like to waste money on, that’s not going to be her problem. In other words, telling me the same thing she tells me every morningbefore she rushes off to work herself. I yell through the door that I’m awake and I’m getting up. What I’m thinking is, I can’t believe I slept. I feel as guilty about that as I do about what happened.
    Five minutes later, I’m dressed and shoveling some Cap’n Crunch into my mouth. I can’t believe I can eat after what happened. I hear footsteps out in the hall and