Root Read Online Free

little else about him was anything like her. Unlike
her, he had never gone to college. He seemed to have no interest in
the world beyond Cleveland.
    “ James? You ever need a job, you can
come up to Ohio and work for me.”
    “ You mean it?”
    He shrugged. “Why not? If you learned anything
from your mom, I know you can write, work with numbers. I could use
some help in the head office. Especially if you could bone up on
some accounting. Why don’t you see if there’s some night classes at
the community college or something?”
    I should have been grateful for the offer, but
a desk job? That had no appeal to me whatsoever. Landscaping to me
meant carving up yards with bulldozers and backhoes; creating hills
and dales, rock gardens and water features; transforming boring
yards into living sculpture.
    “ What about working outside? I mean,
if I came to work for you.”
    He narrowed his eyes. “You don’t wanna be
doing that.”
    “ Why not? I think I’d like it. I
think it’d be cool.”
    Uncle Ed sighed. “Trust me. It’s not something
you want to be doing.” He went into the kitchen and got a Bud out
of the fridge. “That’s why God put Dominicans and Guatemalans on
this earth.”
    ***
    I gladly let my twin nine-year-old cousins
sleep in my room. That week, I pretty much stayed up until everyone
else had gone to bed and then crashed on the sofa. I didn’t sleep a
whole lot, between thinking about dad and thinking about that beach
party on Saturday.
    Despite the pall that the funeral had spread
over everything, I had the sense that this beach thing was going to
be a momentous and monumental occasion—a crux in the course of my
life. I certainly couldn’t hype it up any bigger in my head. The
way I saw it, Jenny was looking for a way for us to connect, to
create an opportunity that would let our feeble bantering and
dilly-dallying evolve into an actual relationship.
    Now Jenny wasn’t the prettiest girl I had ever
met. She had really nice eyes, even without makeup. But her
forehead had an odd pinch to it, and nose was way too small for her
face. She was by no means model material, but I liked the way she
looked—a lot.
    She wasn’t very bright or witty, either. She
never cracked jokes, just snickered at other people’s. And she knew
hardly anything about the world. She thought Obama was a Muslim
socialist and that Afghanistan was a country in Africa. From what
she let me see of her iPod, her taste in music was narrow and
pedestrian—Lady Gaga and Nicki Manaj and not much else in
between.
    She had this odd way of dressing—wearing
sweaters and long pants even when it was warm out and all the other
girls had on short shorts. It made me wonder if she were hiding
some scar or deformity. I wondered what she would wear to the
beach. Would I actually get to see her in a bikini?
    Two days before the beach date, I couldn’t
stand the waiting anymore. My relatives still swarmed the house and
mom had yet to return to work so there was not a chance of privacy,
especially with my two pestiferous cousins poking their nose into
everything I did.
    I needed a fix of Jenny badly. I needed to
hear her voice to make sure that what happened at the funeral was
not a hallucination or a delusion, that the invitation was real. So
I had to figure out a way to call her in private.
    But to get her number, I needed to know her
freaking last name. Jenny was the only name she had given me. That
wasn’t going to get me very far.
    There was this geeky kid next door who went to
her high school. I barely knew him. He rarely seemed to go outside.
But when I saw him taking out the trash, I ran out to the curb in
my boxers. He threw up his arms defensively when he saw me coming
at him fast, like he thought I was going to beat him up and take
his wallet.
    “ Adam, calm down. I’ve just want to
ask you something. You go to Ft. Pierce, right? Do you happen to
know any girls named Jenny?”
    He lowered his arms. “Well yeah, only