Bad Haircut Read Online Free Page A

telephone line on Center Street. We didn't stop until both pairs were dangling from the wire, kicking back and forth like they were walking on air.
    * * *
     
    I was with Kevin at the St. Agnes carnival in Cranwood the night he first laid eyes on Angela Farrone. We were standing by the food booths, spearing french fries from a paper cone.
    “Look at that,” he said. “By the Porta-John.”
    She was a gum-snapping bleached blond about our age, a knockout in a white tube top and jeans so tight that Kevin said she probably had to pack herself in with a shoehorn. In one hand she held a green helium balloon on a string, in the other a goldfish in a little plastic bag filled with water. The door of the Porta-John popped open and a scrawny redhead stepped out, glancing sheepishly around. She took the balloon from her friend and the two of them entered the moving crowd, like cars merging with highway traffic.
    We followed them past the bake sale, the wheels of fortune, and the creaky rent-a-rides, then out of the carnival and down a sidestreet littered with ripped tickets and greasy paper plates. They stopped beneath a streetlight, huddling together with their backs turned in our direction. The green balloon jerked up and down above their heads. We caught up with them just as they stepped apart, hands empty at their sides. For one miraculous moment the balloon and the fish were suspended in midair, connected by the string. Then they started to rise.
    We stood with our heads back, watching theballoon gain altitude as it drifted upward and eastward over the treetops, toward New York City. The goldfish glinted orange in the light, then disappeared, like a match flaring out.
    “Hey,” Kevin said. “Why'd you do that?” The blond shrugged. “The last time I brought a fish home, my Dad flushed it down the toilet.”
    Kevin called Angela every night for a week, but she kept hanging up on him. Then he had an idea. He bought a dozen roses and hired me—I was good in school—to write her a letter.
    Dear Angela,
    My name is Kevin Ross and I have a crush on you. We met on Friday night outside the Carnival. I've been thinking about your fish. Maybe it got lucky and fell in a lake! Will you please come to the movies with me sometime soon? We can see anything you want.
    Your (hopefully) friend,
    Kevin Ross
    P.S.—In case you're wondering, I've employed a friend to give us a ride.
     
    Kevin paid me ten dollars for the letter and another ten for delivery, five of which went to Burnsy, who drove me to Angela's house in the ritzy section of Cranwood. It was early evening, and a sprinkler spun jets of water across the plushfront lawn. The shrubs near the house had been trimmed to look like gum drops and spinning tops. I set the roses on the welcome mat, then turned and ran back to Burnsy's Duster.
    Kevin and Angela went to the drive-in on their first date. They really hit it off. Burnsy said there was so much heavy breathing in the back seat that he had to get out of the car and watch the second half of
Billy Jack
sitting on the gravel, holding the speaker to his ear. He told me this as we drove to Angela's to deliver another bouquet of roses, along with a poem I'd written at White Diamond:
    Last night at the drive-in
The people in cars
Were watching the movie
But we were the stars!
     
    It was Wednesday afternoon and I should have been doing my paper route. I was a carrier for the
Community News
, a freebie shopper paper. Once a week I had to fold 300 papers, secure them with rubber bands, then deliver one to every house in a six-block area. The entire process took about seven hours, and I made ten bucks.
    I had been wobbling down Oak Street around noon on my old stingray bike when Burnsy's car pulled up and began crawling down the street beside me. Kevin rolled down the passenger window.I could tell from his greasy T-shirt that he was on lunch hour from the station.
    “Hey Buddy,” he said. “You ever write a