Breathing Read Online Free Page B

earth.
    “You want me to tell Mama you got a boyfriend?”
    I’m about ready to take that baseball bat out of his hands and knock him to kingdom come, when Jackson pipes up. “Go on and play ball. I suggest you leave her ’lone.” And you can hear in his voice he means it. Ain’t nobody ever looked out for me like that.
    “Act like you got some raising!” I add to Dog.
    “Whatchoo gonn’ do ’bout it?” Dog insists on being his sorry self. That boy ain’t got a lick of sense.
    Jackson jumps like he’s going to get him, then laughs when Dog turns tail. As we walk on, Jackson says all quietlike, “You got a boyfriend, huh?” And he’s smiling at me from here to tomorrow.
    The red rises right up my cheeks. “He don’t know nothing,” I say, not wanting Jackson to think I’m presuming anything. I haven’t had a serious boyfriend yet. I mean, I’ve messed around some and there were guys I liked and all. But they don’t count for real. That was just kid stuff.
    “Come on,” he says, taking my hand again and heading down the beach away from where everybody lays out.
    We walk till we find a spot where there ain’t so many folks all over and sit down in the sand to watch the surf with its bubbling white foam.
    I can see Jackson drifting off in his thoughts, like something’s on his mind. I ain’t sure what to say really, but I know I want to bring him back here with me. “Where you from?” I finally get up the nerve to ask after practicing it in my head sixteen times.
    “Greenville,” he says.
    “How come I ain’t seen you here before this summer?” I wonder out loud, seeing as Greenville ain’t all that far off.
    He’s quiet awhile, then he says, “I always helped my daddy in the summer, buildin’ cabinets. We didn’t have time to kick back at the beach like Junior and Billy Jo.”
    “Why’d you get to come out this year?” I ask.
    He shrugs. “My dad passed on in April, had himself a heart attack.” Looking out to the sea, he says, “Guess my ma thought it’d be good for me, you know, get away from everything for a spell. So she sent me to his brother’s family for the summer.”
    “I’m sorry,” I say, my stomach twisting up like the tornado I was named after. “What you hope to do come fall?”
    He looks right straight at me and smiles. “Maybe I’ll find me a reason to stick around here awhile.” Honest to God. Can you believe it?
    “I hope so,” I say.
    And then, as if God is sitting up in heaven watching us, thinking we need a cooling down, the tide comes and chases us up the beach. By the time we settle back in the sand, the mood has shifted.
    “Thought I might like to try paintin’ houses,” he says, but there’s a look in his eye tells me something ain’t right.
    “Houses? What you want to do that for?”
    He turns away and looks out to the sea as if he might find my answer there. “Sump’n wrong with paintin’ houses?”
    “Hell no,” I say. “I just got an inkling of a feeling that that ain’t all there is to it.”
    “You got a feeling, huh? There ain’t no shark coming after me, is there?”
    I swat him on the arm for that one. “Be serious!”
    But then his face turns all still and he goes, “Naw, you’re right. I cain’t lie. What I really want to do is paint for real, you know, like pitures. I ain’t talking about doing portraits for rich folk—more like, you know, putting onto the canvas sump’n I see in my head, sump’n I cain’t even describe into words, but give me a brush and I sure as hell can show you. I want to travel the world and put what I see into my pitures.” Then he blushes like he’s all embarrassed for being honest. And if that don’t give me the goosiest goose bumps you ever did see!
    “I want to travel, too,” I say. “First, I aim to see the Blue Ridge Mountains. But then I want to go on and check out the rest of the world. I’ma go to college and get me a real good job, maybe like a journalist or a writer of