Free Tex by S. E. Hinton Page A

it matters. To me, anyway,” I added, tired of lying about it.
    â€œAnd you think it doesn’t matter to Johnny? Listen, he’s been acting so weird that Mona has started making him take vitamins. Cole let him get the cycle out early because he’s just been sitting around with gloom and doom on his face.”
    Well, if Johnny didn’t want to keep this fight going, and I didn’t, you’d think it would be easy to patch things up. But I couldn’t see anything easy about it.
    â€œHe’s going to be out dirt-biking at the gravel pits after school today,” Jamie was saying. I wondered when she had started wearing a bra. “And if you two don’t quit being so … so…” she paused, looking for a strong enough word, “asinine, I’m not going to speak to either one of you.”
    I grinned at her. “Well, that’s a real inspiration.”
    Suddenly she blushed. Turned red clear up to her bangs. I felt my face get hot, and I knew I was turning red, too.
    â€œYou know, Tex, you are really cute,” Jamie said. But she didn’t say it sarcastic, not one bit. Then she got up and hurried off. I sat there, my face flaming like a bonfire. My heart would stop, then go racing on till I thought I’d suffocate. I had a sudden urge to jump up on my chair and let out a war whoop, but I managed to control myself. For a little while. When Eddie-Joe Cummings came by and cracked a joke, I laughed, and dumped what was left of my chocolate milk on his head.
    I got out to the gravel pits with Roger Genet. Roger wasn’t real popular with a lot of people, seeing how he was given to stealing things and beating up on kids he knew he could whip. But me and him always got along okay. Anyway, I needed a ride out to the gravel pits, and he had a cycle.
    There were five or six cycles out there, roaring up and down the hills, seeing how high they could jump, or who could do the longest wheelie.
    Johnny was there but didn’t give any indication that he saw me. That bugged me for a second, but then, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.
    After a while everybody got together and talked over an old subject, doing an Evel Knievel jump over the creek. Last year a high school senior had tried it, missed, and broke his back. Since then, a lot of people talked about jumping the creek, but nobody really tried it. A couple of people, including Roger Genet, said they had tried it and made it, but unfortunately nobody had been around to witness it I had always wanted to try it myself, but since I didn’t have a bike, I didn’t want to take a chance on wrecking Johnny’s.
    Johnny was saying something about giving it a go, except he was low on gas.
    â€œHell,” said Roger, “that little bitty thing couldn’t make it across the creek if it was pumped full.”
    He had a big old Honda, the kind you couldn’t ride legal till you were sixteen. You’d think he wouldn’t want to keep reminding everybody he was sixteen and still in the ninth grade, but somehow I don’t think Roger ever saw it like that.
    â€œSure it could,” Johnny said. He looked at his fuel gauge. “Maybe I have got enough to try it.”
    I swung off the back of Roger’s cycle. “I don’t know,” I said, looking at Johnny’s fuel gauge. “You look awful low on gas, to me.”
    I was trying to give Johnny a way to get out of a try, but he looked at me like I was razzing him.
    â€œIt’s enough,” he said curtly, then started up the hill. I took two long strides and hopped on behind him. He didn’t say anything. On top of the hill we stopped. The trail led straight down, right to the edge of the creek, then made a sharp left. On the other side the bank was grassy—there weren’t any tire tracks there. The creek sides were steep and it was a twenty-foot drop to the creek bed, at least.
    â€œYou can get off now,”