Read Online How the Hula Girl Sings by Joe Meno - Free Book Online

sweet round face.
    “Thought you might wanna know. She was your girlfriend for a while, right? She lost her virginity to you and all.” She frowned, running her finger right past my hands along the thick brown branch.
    “Is that what she told you?”
    “Yes, she sure did. She had said you two were planning on getting married and all.”
    “Christ!” I shouted. “That’s the worst lie I ever heard. Your sister lost her virginity a long time before me somewhere in someone else’s backseat.”
    “Is that so? So I guess my sister is a liar, huh?” Her eyes flashed up, right into mine, full of anger and fire. I felt my chest and stomach tighten hard. I wanted to reach through the window and kiss her right there.
    “So I’m supposed to believe you over my own sister? I think I should push you right off that branch for being so smug, don’t you?” Right there she could have asked any question and I would have said, “Yes.” She kind of flipped some of her curly brown hair over her shoulder and held her mouth closed.
    “Are you gonna give me a kiss or not?” I asked.
    “Not in a million years.”
    “Fine.” I gave right in. I shook my head and began to climb down the tree.
    “Where are you going?” she asked. The strap of her slip alighted from her shoulder down across the top of her arm. I could almost see the roundness of her smooth white breast.
    “I’m going home.”
    “Home? I didn’t think you’d just leave like that.”
    “I’m sick of being called a hood. Good night.”
    “Well, fine. Fine.”
    “Fine,” I repeated, leaping off a lower branch down into the soft green grass.
    “Fine!” Charlene shouted, slamming her window closed. That cool lush electrical light flickered off and left me standing alone in the dark by myself.
    “FINE!!!” I shouted as loud as I could, then hopped over her parents’ lousy picket fence. “Always thought you were kind of a scrawny girl anyway! You old maid!”
    I walked down the dark desolate street, still mumbling things to myself. Two cold headlight beams stopped right upon my face. A big red pickup truck pulled to a halt beside me. I could hear a gravelly voice over the rumble of the engine as it idled in park.
    “You Luce Lemay, right?”
    I nodded once, squinting hard to see who was behind the wheel. It was a dark face. I felt my innards turn cold. I felt like I was about to be shot down. The red door swung open. I saw someone’s white fist a few seconds before I felt the blow across my teeth.
    “Stay the hell away from my girl!” he shouted. My head snapped back as the bastard swung again, cracking me hard in the jaw. Snap! I felt one of my back teeth roll up against my tongue like a tiny stone, dangling by a thin red string.
    “Girl?” I mumbled, spitting out blood. “I don’t know no one’s girl.”
    He cracked me in the mouth again. This time the loose tooth shot right out and did a little dance in blood as it hit the paved ground. I looked up at his face. It was big and white and square-shaped. There was a huge white scar just above his lip that still had a few stitches of thread left in the skin. His hair was reddish-brown and kind of black along the crown where it rose in twelve hundred greasy cowlicks.
    “My name’s Earl Peet. Charlene’s my fiancée, you understand? A no-good like you crawling all over her makes me sick. Stay the hell away from her, you understand?”
    Somehow this big juggernaut had his thick hands wrapped around my throat. Somehow I couldn’t throw a punch to save my life. It had been that girl. She had made me soft in the head. Earl Peet punched me square in my left eye and shook me again.
    “Stay away from Charlene, you understand?!!”
    “But she didn’t mention anything about being engaged.”
    “Well, that girl doesn’t know what she wants right now. I don’t need you fouling things up between us.”
    He squeezed my neck with his fat thick fingers, nearly making me choke. “Just stay the hell away.”