different?”
“You didn’t break a window, did you?”
“C’mon, Julian, why would I do that?”
“Okay, so what
did
you do?”
“Just look around,” he said.
I put my hands in my coat pockets and took a stroll.The ground underneath the grass was hard, which I was grateful for, since it meant mud wasn’t caking on my dress shoes. I was glancing up and down, side to side, trying to pick out anything that looked wrong. After I’d covered the yard, I walked along the edge of the house, running my fingertips along the wood slats.
“You’re ice cold,” Lonnie called.
I stepped away from the house and drifted back toward the yard.
“You’re getting warmer.…”
“Did you carve the tree?”
“I wouldn’t hurt the tree, Julian. What did the tree ever do to me?”
“Then I give up,” I said.
“Do you want a hint?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t go out on a limb,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means what it says.”
“Then I don’t get it.”
“Don’t go out on a
limb
, Julian.”
Suddenly, it hit me. I looked up, almost straight into the sun. It took a second for my eyes to adjust, but there, about three-quarters of the way up the tree, was a worn-out pair of black high-top sneakers. They were dangling from a narrow branch by their laces, which were knottedtogether. The dark color of the sneakers blended in real well with the bark of the tree. You likely wouldn’t have noticed them unless you were looking straight at them. Sooner or later, though, they were sure to get noticed.
“How could you do that, Lonnie?”
“How could I not?” he said.
“C’mon, it’s the
Bowne House
. If it were just a tree from the block—”
“You’re the one who gave me the idea when you were going on and on about that painting. So, in a way, it was
your
idea.…”
“Lonnie!”
“I’m just joking with you, Jules. Don’t be such a Goody Two-Shoes.”
“I’m
not
a Goody Two-Shoes,” I said. “I just don’t get the point of it. Why would you even want your sneakers here? Who’s going to see them?”
“They’re not
my
sneakers. They’re
Quentin’s
.”
“You stole Quentin’s sneakers?”
“He left them at my house last year,” he said. “They didn’t fit him anymore, so we were going to tree them, but then it started to rain, and we just forgot about them. My mom found them a couple of weeks ago in the basement. That’s when I got the idea. I even wrote Quentin’s name in them—”
“Lonnie!”
“What?”
“You’re going to get him in trouble.”
“I didn’t write his
last
name,” he said.
“How many guys named Quentin live in Flushing?”
“What difference does it make? The guy’s got a
tumor
. What do you think is going to happen? You think the cops are going to show up at his hospital room and arrest him? Not to mention they’ll know he
couldn’t
have done it himself, because he’s in the hospital.”
“What about after he gets out?”
“If he’s out of the hospital, that means he’s in good shape. So it’s win-win.”
“That’s not even what ‘win-win’ means.”
“I know what ‘win-win’ means, Jules. Do you know what ‘tribute’ means?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Don’t you think Quentin deserves a tribute?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then case closed,” he said.
January 12, 1970
Good Citizenship
Here’s the third essay on good citizenship I wrote for Principal Salvatore:
My sister, Amelia, reads lots of books. Not just the ones she has to read for school.
She takes books out of the library on Union Street and reads them just because that’s what she likes to do. Last week, she finished a book called Love Story . It made her cry her eyes out at the end, and when I asked her why she was crying, she said, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” I think good citizenship is theexact opposite of love. It means saying you’re sorry for stuff you didn’t do. So I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m
Fran Louise
Charlotte Sloan
Douglas E. Schoen, Melik Kaylan
Anonymous
Jocelynn Drake
Jo Raven
Julie Garwood
Debbie Macomber
Undenied (Samhain).txt
B. Kristin McMichael