Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
He was a nice kid who deserved far more than my misplaced wrath. Though, back then, I hadn’t realized that it was misplaced, so I’d ignored the pang of guilt in my gut as I’d hurried up the driveway. Thankfully, Ramsey hadn’t harped on my gratitude as he’d handed me my backpack and I’d slammed the door in his face.
Yeah, fine. I felt guilty about that too. But what the heck was I supposed to do? Shove the wrappers and TV trays out of the way and invite him in for a drink? In a glass I would have had to wash first since Lord knew when the last time the dishes had been done. Oh wait, I knew exactly how long because I’d never stopped counting.
One month, two weeks, four days, three hours, and twenty-nine minutes.
“Did they figure out whose dog it was?” I asked as both of my crutches landed safely on the ground.
Once he was sure I was steady, Ramsey backed out of my way. “Yep. Mine.”
“What? You don’t have a dog.”
“How do you know? You been spying on me, Thea?”
The side of his mouth hiked adorably—I mean, annoyingly. Totally annoying.
“Psh, yeah right. That’s your job. I’m not that bored,” I lied. I was actually bored out of my freaking mind. I still had six more weeks until my cast came off. And just the thought of spending those days locked inside The House of Despair made me panic anytime I thought about it.
“Yeah, right,” he mumbled, clearing the hair from his eyes with one of those twitches that had long since become involuntary.
We started toward my house, and as usual, Ramsey walked in the grass so I could have the sidewalk to myself.
“So if it was your dog, how’d it get to the school soccer field?”
“Well, I only said he was my dog now. Not that he was my dog at the time. Animal control showed up, but it took off into the woods. The dog bit Josh Caskey. He deserved a medal of honor, not the gas chamber. So yesterday, while you were being lame hiding out in your house, I grabbed some meat and rode my bike out there to find him. Poor thing was scared to death. But nothing bologna couldn’t cure. You wanna come over and see him?”
I don’t know what happened. Maybe it was the old adage that time healed all wounds. Or maybe it was that I’d always wanted a dog but my mom had been allergic. Whatever it was, for the first time in as long as I could remember, a spark of excitement ignited inside me.
It was small.
But I felt it, and after months of pain spiraling like a tornado inside me, I was willing to do whatever I had to do to hold on to it. Even if that meant voluntarily spending time with Ramsey.
“Yeah,” I replied.
His smile nearly blinded me. “Yeah?”
I nodded, and he wasted not a single second with further conversation. At a dead sprint, he ran straight to his small, brick ranch, our book bags bouncing on his shoulders.
A little girl filled Ramsey’s empty spot beside me as I continued to hobble down the sidewalk.
God, she looked so much like him that it was almost scary. But where Ramsey was tall and rugged, Nora was petite and beautiful. She didn’t wear dresses or lip gloss, but there was something inherently feminine about her even in dirty jeans and scuffed sneakers. She was two years younger than we were, but wherever Ramsey went, she was usually only a few steps away. This included when he’d built a shoddy ramp out of two concrete bricks and a piece of plywood about as sturdy as a spider’s web. She’d gotten one jump off that thing before it’d broken and caused her to crash, skin her elbows, and pop her chain. She’d cried and cried as Ramsey tried to fix her bike. But even from my vantage point of the living room window, I’d known that it was a lost cause.
I was all too aware that not having a bike sucked. So that night, after everyone had gone inside, I hopped over, nearly breaking my neck twice to leave my bike on their front porch. I made sure to leave a note that read loaner taped to the handle bars. It was going to be months before I could ride again. Someone should get some use out of it.
Ramsey tried to thank me seven hundred times the next day. I’d snapped at him to shut up.
He’d smiled.
I’d hit him with my crutch.
And then he’d started talking about something dumb and I’d gone right back to ignoring him.
Business as usual.
I’d seen Nora countless times, but in all the weeks Ramsey had been making my ears bleed with his motor mouth, she’d never spoken to me. Until then.