Free The Liberation of Gabriel King by K. L. Going Page A

barely catch her breath.
    “What did you…Can you believe…Did you see…”
    She lay down on the ground, sprawled out like a limp rag doll, and I sat down beside her, my heart still thumping.
    “Gabe,” she said at last, breathing hard, “I think we nearly got ourselves killed.”
    That was the God’s honest truth. We’d gone in worrying about one corpse and come out worrying about two.

Chapter 15
OFF A HIGH BRANCH
    O NE THING I LEARNED ABOUT LIBERATING: S OMETIMES IT’S NOT SO easy to decide when it’s done. Now we were twice as scared of the Evans trailer as we’d been before, but Frita said that had most definitely been our best try, so we crossed it off in black Magic Marker. Then we decided to take a breather.
    July first, Frita came over and brought an article from
Life
magazine. It was all about the Bicentennial, so we propped it up against Jimmy’s spider tank so we could both see it at the same time. We lay in the grass on our stomachs, reading it, and every now and then we’d turn the magazine around so Jimmy could see the pictures.
    We were looking at a two-page spread of fireworks when Frita asked her question.
    “Think we should go to the fireworks in Hollowell?” she asked, studying the page.
    “Where else would we go?”
    “We could go to the ones in Rockford.”
    “Why would we do that?” I asked.
    Frita shrugged.
    We were quiet for a minute, but then she said, “Terrance told me there wouldn’t be any black people at the ones in Hollowell. He said they’d all be going to Rockford.”
    I wondered why it made a difference. Never seemed to bother Frita before.
    “Terrance said white people aren’t celebrating
our
independence. He says they’re only celebrating the independence of white people.”
    Huh. I thought we were celebrating everyone’s independence.
    “Momma and Pop and me are celebrating your independence,” I said, “and we’re going to Hollowell.”
    Frita shrugged like it was no big deal.
    “I was just wondering,” she said. Then she flipped the page around so Jimmy could see. “You think Mr. Evans will be there?”
    She said it real casual, but I could tell she’d been gearing up to ask me that. I hadn’t thought about it none, but I supposed he would be. “Yup,” I said.
    Frita flipped off her sandals and wiped the sweat from her brow.
    “No big deal,” she said, tapping on Jimmy’s tank. Then she turned over on her back and changed the subject. “Want to go swimming in the catfish pond?”
    Frita was already wearing her bathing suit top with shorts because it was too hot to wear other clothes. Swimmingsounded real good, except there was always a clump of sixth-graders at the catfish pond, and two of them were sure to be Duke and Frankie.
    “We could use the sprinkler,” I said.
    “Sprinklers are for babies.” Frita looked at me like she knew exactly what I was thinking. “It’s time we did more liberatin’ anyway.”
    Frita stood up. “I’ll do something off my list if you come swimming.”
    Now my ears perked up because I was always interested in what was on Frita’s list, and it
was
pretty hot out.
    “What’s left on your list?” I asked.
    “The rope swing…mostly.”
    “Mostly?”
    Frita nodded.
    “It’s on my list too,” I said, but that was the wrong thing to say, because Frita got all excited.
    “Go ask your momma if we can go,” she said, standing up. Then she picked up Jimmy’s tank and twirled him like a ballerina.
    “This will make us brave for sure,” she said.
    *   *   *
    Maybe Frita was going to be brave, but I knew I was headed to almost certain death. I said I’d do five other things off my list if we stayed home and used the sprinkler, but Frita was being a locomotive again.
    “Just wait,” she told me. “After this you’ll feel so brave, you’ll be first in line for the fifth grade.”
    Fat chance of that. Besides, the sixth-graders never let anyone else use the rope swing. It was an unwritten rule. But