Long Division Read Online Free Page A

her what I’d been waiting to ask her the whole break.
    “Shalaya Crump!” I said, “Can you break it down for me one more time. What I gotta do to make you love me?”
    Shalaya Crump laughed and started digging into the red dirt with her dark bony thumbs that were covered in these Ring Pop rings. Right there is when Shalaya Crump wiped her greasy mouth with the collar of her purple Gumby T-shirt and said, “Why you gotta be so green light lately, City?”
    “Green light?”
    “Yeah, you never stop. All you do is spit game about ‘love this’ and ‘love that.’ I already told you that I could love you if you found a way to be…” Shalaya Crump stopped talking, looked me right in the eyes, and grabbed the fingertips of my hands. “City, just listen,” she said. “Look, if we could take a spaceship to the future, and we ain’t know if we’d ever come back, would you go with me?” Shalaya Crump was always changing the subject to the future at the craziest times.
    I swear I tried to come up with something smart, something that would make her think I could be the skinniest, smartest boy she’d ever want to spend the rest of my life with. “Girl, in the future,” I told Shalaya Crump, “when we take that spaceship, firstthing is I think that Eddie Murphy is gonna do a PG movie. And umm, I think that Michael Jackson and New Edition are gonna come together and sing a song at our wedding, but ain’t nobody at the wedding gonna care because everyone at the wedding is gonna finally know.”
    “Uh, finally know what?” She stopped and let go of my wrists.
    “Finally know, you know, what that real love looks like, baby.”
    “City! Why you gotta get all Vienna sausage school bus when you start trying to spit game?” She paused and actually waited for an answer. I didn’t have one, so she kept going. “Just stop. You stuck on talking about love but I’m talking about the future . Can we just talk about that? What happened to you? One day you were just regular and we were playing Atari and hitting each other in the face with pine cones. Then, just like that, you get to stealing Bibles to impress me and wearing clean clothes and talking about love and getting jealous of Willis whenever we watch Diff’rent Strokes and asking me all these questions about what senior I have a crush on. Can’t you just be yourself?”
    “I am being myself,” I told her. “I don’t like how you look at Willis.” I knew that making Shalaya Crump love me wasn’t going to be easy, so I didn’t let her little speech throw me off. “You talk all that mess about me, but you the one who didn’t always talk about the future like you do now.” I looked in her eyes, but she was looking at the ground. “No offense, girl, but you talk about the future way more than I talk about love.”
    “But I’m not just talking.” She wiped sardine grease off my lip. “That’s the difference. I’m asking about what you’d do with me in the future, like in 2013. For real! Would you come with me if I could get us there?” I just looked at Shalaya Crump and wonderedhow she could say I was being all Vienna sausage school bus and all green light when, seriously, she was the one always wondering about life in 2013. No kid in 1985 admitted to thinking about life in the ’90s, and definitely not in 2013, not even after Back to the Future came out.
    “Never mind,” she said. “You don’t get it.”
    “I do get it,” I told her. “I get that I might not be the one for you. In 2013, I’ma be like 42. When I’m 42, you’ll still think my hairline is too crooked and my sweat’ll still stink like gas station toilets.” I looked up and hoped she would interrupt me. She didn’t. “Anyway. You could never love me even if I was the skinniest, smartest boy in the South. I truly know that now.”
    Shalaya Crump finally laughed and looked me right in my mouth. “City, I’ma ask you one more time to stop being so Young and the Restless .