CROSS (A Gentry Boys Novella) Read Online Free Page A

night was apparently not easy to fix.  Fourteen hours after I’d opened my eyes in my bedroom to the sound of silence the town remained silent.  And now it was dark too, except for the prison, which operated on some kind of emergency generator.  A halo of garish fluorescence made the Central State Penitentiary look like a cruel oasis.  It was ugly to look at in the daylight.  At night it was downright ominous. 
    The hangout everyone called ‘the tunnel’ was just an old railroad overpass.  The line itself hadn’t been active in decades and the single lane road that cut beneath it had been abandoned around the same time as the town’s roads were reconfigured.  My dad had once told me that before the days of asphalt this old road was lined with wooden plank boards and stretched all the way to Tucson, some seventy miles south.  He said when he was a kid you could still find a lot of the old rotted planks half buried in the desert sand. 
    “Ah, you’re slipping, you’re slipping!”
    “Shut up Stone!” 
    “Why are you fighting it, little brother?  Just let go.  It’s okay.” 
    “Fuck you.” 
    There was a lot of shouting, cheering and half drunk laughter.  The Gentry brothers were fighting their latest war of wills.   They’d climbed up to the bridge and were hanging from the old tracks by the skin of their fingertips.  Some of the other boys had tried it as well but they’d already fallen into the sand, leaving only Stone, Conway, and one of the Cortez boys to fight it out to the silly, pointless end.  
    I rolled my eyes at the sound of the action, but I was facing away and no one was watching me anyway. I’d been listening to the noise of those two trying to outdo one another since I was a toddler.  Since all I’d ever had were two sisters I didn’t know much about how brothers were supposed to be with each other, but it seemed like they should have outgrown juvenile nonsense like this.  Somehow I guessed that the Gentry brothers never would, no matter how old they got. 
    My phone buzzed in my pocket.  I’d been careful about using it all day since there was no way to recharge at the moment. I smiled when I saw the text was from Roe. 
    “Kicked Anton to the curb.  Hallelujah chorus.” 
    That girl went through boyfriends like they were paper towels.  She had shitty taste.  The ones she picked were all macho pigs who treated her like she owed them money.   I was glad to hear that her latest mistake was history. 
    I texted back.  “The chorus echoes all the way down here in sandy Siberia.  Miss you.” 
    The reply came back in seconds.  “Want some company?  I could take a drive down this week.” 
    “YES!  Imagine emojis galore.” 
    “You know I hate emojis.  Thursday afternoon okay?”
    “Perfect and you’re staying the night.  No arguments.” 
    “Awesome.  Dad’s away on business and stepmonster won’t even notice.” 
    I was still smiling as I pushed the phone into my back pocket.  Roe was my oldest friend, my best friend, other than Conway of course.  She moved away from Emblem after the seventh grade when her father hit the jackpot on some Phoenix real estate he’d bought up cheaply during the housing crisis.  I didn’t understand or care about the dollars and cents behind it, but I’d heard an awful lot of Emblem folks grumbling about how Jefferson Tory was no better than a bottom feeder.  It was probably just jealousy.  When I’d asked my own dad about it he’d taken a minute to chew and swallow before answering that no man should be ashamed of self-preservation.  Anyway, I sure didn’t begrudge Roe’s family their newfound wealth, but I did mind very much when they picked up and moved fifty miles away to Scottsdale.  She’d been enrolled in some kind of swank prep school up there until some recent scandal involving one of her teachers.  Whatever had happened was bad and she didn’t like talking about it.  Now that she had a car