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)
“Is everything okay? I heard you yelling,” he said.
“Um, yeah. It’s fine. That kid who broke my leg is outside. That’s all.”
“Ramsey?”
Ramsey? What a stupid name. And that assessment came from a girl named Althea Floye Hull, but somehow his was still worse.
“How do you know his name?” I asked.
“His family moved in two doors down a couple weeks ago.” My zombie father lifted his hand in a wave, and I glanced out the window in time to see Ramsey return it. With that, my dad ran out of energy for the day and headed straight back to his bedroom, muttering, “Nice kid. You should get out of the house and see if he wants to ride bikes with you.”
I gritted my teeth, biting back a dozen words I wasn’t allowed to say. “Yeah. I’ll get right on that.”
The door closed behind him without another word spoken.
For three days.
“Dang it, come on,” I mumbled, struggling to sharpen my pencil while balancing on my crutches.
I wasn’t supposed to be using them yet. The doctor had told me to wait three weeks to make sure my ankle had healed enough in case I accidentally put weight on it. I was beyond done with the wheelchair thing though. Limping and hobbling had to be better than sitting around all the time.
Getting on and off the bus that morning had been a nightmare. I don’t even know how my dad had expected me to get to school in my wheelchair. Not that we’d really discussed it. He didn’t talk much anymore.
He nodded.
He hummed in acknowledgement.
He sometimes smiled when he thought it was socially required.
But he was a shell of the man I’d grown up with.
It had been fifteen days since she died, and while he’d returned to work, he was only going through the motions.
Just as I’d feared the day she died, I was on my own.
The class chattered behind me as they worked on the obligatory first-day-of-school get-to-know-your-neighbor assignment. I didn’t need to get to know Josh Caskey. I’d known and hated him since we were both in diapers.
“Thea,” Mrs. Young called.
I pivoted on one foot to face her, and then my life as I knew it changed all over again.
My breath caught in my throat when I saw Ramsey, the freaking leg-breaking spy, standing beside her. Fifth grade and he was already taller than the teacher. He had a hand shoved into his pocket, and the ends of his hair tangled with his long lashes with every blink.
There were a lot of rules at school. Sit down. Be quiet. No running in the halls. But secretly we all knew only one was enforced.
No gum.
Yet there he stood, chewing away as he shot me a smile and a wave.
I didn’t return his greeting, and that only had a tiny bit to do with me needing two hands to balance.
I begrudgingly tore my gaze away from my archnemesis and replied, “Yes, ma’am.”
The teacher grinned. “I heard you and Mr. Stewart know each other.”
“Then somebody lied to you.”
Ramsey cocked his head to the side. “How’d you get that cast then, gimpy?”
Judging by the smile twitching his lips, he was teasing me.
Judging by the inferno brewing inside me, he was standing entirely too close to a ticking time bomb.
Cocking my head to the side, I retorted, “An idiot fell out of a tree.”
His dark eyes twinkled in the florescent lighting. “Hang on now. Did he fall or did he jump after he told you to back up?”
I glared at him with everything I had. “I did back up.”
He returned my glare, smiling the entire time. “Obviously not far enough.”
“It would have been far enough if you could stick a landing.”
He shrugged. “Never claimed to be a gymnast.”
“Funny, you never claimed you weren’t an idiot, either.”
“Figured that went without saying.”
“Well, you figured wrong, idiot.”
Mrs. Young stepped between the two of us. “Okay, okay. Enough with the name calling. Ramsey, since you’re new, Thea will be your official Clovert Elementary tour guide. And, Thea, since you will be needing help getting to and from the bus over the next few months, Ramsey will be your personal book bag carrier. You two think you can do that for me without someone else breaking a limb?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ramsey answered immediately, though he’d tucked his gum under his tongue before he’d spoken.
Both of their expectant gazes landed on me.
I would have rather been listening to one of Josh Caskey’s riveting stories about skinning deer and killing squirrels than this crap. But much like the rest of my life, it was going to happen whether I wanted it to or not. “Do I have a choice?”
She shook her head. “Not really.”
I flashed Ramsey a tight and entirely fake smile. “Fine. I’ll do it. But no promises on the broken limbs.”
He let out a loud laugh as if I’d told a joke rather than threatened his life. And worst of all, it was a laugh that made me want to laugh too.