Read Online All American Boys by Jason Reynolds - Free Book Online Page B

Those eyes. My eyes. My dad’s eyes—in the photo the pizza guys had up on the wall, two guys in greasy T-shirts with their arms up around my dad’s shoulders. Dad, a pillar of stone, dressed like usual in his Class A blues. The rest of the photos were of people in the pizza shop, but not the one with Dad. He’d gotten the guys to make pizzas for the soup kitchen at St. Mary’s. His photo looked down on me.
    When I was finally up near the front, I felt a tug at my arm. I was about to turn back to Willy to tell him that he might have lost our seats, but it wasn’t Willy at my arm. It was Jill.
    She pulled close to me, so the people behind us couldn’t hear. “Hey, Quinn, you mind getting an extra slice?” she asked. Her hair fell in two blond-brown curtains around her face, and I could smell her shampoo as she looked up at me conspiratorially, and when a girl looks at you like that, all you can say is, Whatever you want—I’ll do anything for you—is there anything else you want? “Yeah,” I somehow managed to say instead.
    â€œYeah, you mind?” She grinned.
    â€œNo. Yeah. No.” I laughed. Like a moron.
    The thing about slices at Mother’s is that they are huge, soshe stuck around to help carry it all outside. She offered some money but I waved her off. Because I had it good at Mother’s. I’d grabbed us all Cokes, too, because the guys at Mother’s always gave Saint Springfield’s son a major discount, and yeah, well, I was the kind of guy who just kept taking those free Cokes, no questions asked, like I actually deserved them or something.
    â€œHow were you planning on carrying this all out there on your own, anyway?” she asked.
    I had two giant slices and two Cokes by the necks of the bottles; she had two slices and a Coke. “Guess I was just waiting for you,” I said.
    She frowned, but in a cute way, like it was really a smile. “Oh, yeah. I bet you were.”
    Willy had managed to save two seats, but when he saw us, he got up and offered Jill his. “Please,” he said. She tried to protest, but he wouldn’t let her. He stood at the end of the picnic table and glanced back and forth at us while he shoved pizza into his face.
    â€œOne of us is what you’d call a gentleman,” he informed us.
    â€œHe’s hilarious,” Jill said to me. Now what kind of world did I live in where my twelve-year-old brother was the cooler flirt than me?
    â€œYeah,” I said. “I’m supposed to be his role model. But maybe it’s the other way around.”
    â€œNah,” she said. “I bet he learned all this from someone. But this someone needs to sit down today, huh?”
    â€œI’m old and broken. He’s got his whole life ahead of him.”
    â€œYeah,” Jill said. “And you’re hungover, right?”
    â€œI knew it!” Willy yelped. “I knew you were going to a party last night.”
    â€œOops,” Jill said.
    I pointed at Willy. “Between us. Got me?”
    â€œOh, yeah,” Willy said. “Until I need the ammo.”
    â€œWilly—”
    â€œWill, please.”
    Jill laughed. She put her hand on Willy’s wrist, and his face changed. His whole body probably blushed as deep red as his face. He gave her the dopiest smile. Had I looked like that when she’d asked me to get her a slice? Jesus. But Jill didn’t mind. “Will,” she said. “Don’t get him in trouble, because then it will be my fault, and he’ll never speak to me again.”
    I stared at Will, and he knew exactly what I was saying with my eyebrows: Don’t fuck this up, dude.
    â€œWhatever,” Willy said. “I’m only kidding.”
    Willy and I shared the extra slice as Jill and I talked about the party. I tried to get a sense of whether or not she and English had hooked up, but I wasn’t going to ask outright because it