Surface Tension Read Online Free Page B

because she just drops her towel, walks right into the water up to her knees, and then dives in.
    Mr. Richardson is outside crawling around the property line. He hates our walnut tree. It's this old tree that is right next to our house, but some of the branches reach over theRichardsons' yard, and they drop these nasty green walnuts onto his lawn.
    Mr. Richardson has complained to my dad about it a lot over the years, but Dad says he's not going to do anything about it. I think it's kind of funny. I mean, not exactly funny, but entertaining in a weird way. Every time the wind blows, Mr. Richardson comes out of his house and walks through his yard picking up all the little twigs and small branches that fell out of the trees. Then he comes over to the property line and starts looking through the grass on his hands and knees for the little green walnuts. When he finds one, he lobs it back over onto our property like a little hand grenade.
    I understand why he does it, because there's nothing like the sound of a lawn mower running over a walnut, but I also think it's kind of funny to kick one or two back over onto his property as I walk by later.
    Mom and Dad went to the farmers' market and I'm going fishing in the pond up at the dairy farm. But first I have to find my fishing pole, which is why I'm standing in the garage getting pissed off because I can't find it in all this crap.
    For one thing, there's hardly any light at all in here. You'd think that the easiest thing to find would be a fishing pole, because it's long and skinny, but it's actually a lot harder. There's just so much crap. I wish Mom and Dad would clean all this up.
    It could be under the collection of flat inner tubes or with all the bent Wiffle ball bats. It could even be up in the loft with all the old mattresses. I think it used to lean up against the refrigerator that's been unplugged since we bought this place, either there or behind the oil tank, but notnear the half-empty paint cans or with the bamboo and the sticks from when I tried to make a bow and arrow.
    I climb over the spare pieces of wood and start going through the toy section of the garage, with the boccie ball set and the chemistry set. I remember when we got this chemistry set. Mom got it at a yard sale somewhere. It was so cool. You open up the case and there are all these little containers of powdery chemicals. And all you do is just mix them up in various combinations to do different things. I used to play with this all the time, trying to get things to explode, but they never did. I wonder if it was because the chemicals were old or because I didn't have any idea of what I was doing.
    Here it is. It was lying flat underneath the canoe, with the paddles. I grab it and carry the tackle box in my other hand as I walk up Richardsons' Lane, past the farmhouse and the grain silo and the cow barn with the three hippie symbols painted on it. A flower, a peace sign, and a yin-yang. That place smells a lot because the cows just have to stand there with the suction cups hooked onto their nipples. I used to come up here with Mom and Dad when I was little just to hang out and watch them milk the cows. I don't know why, but it sort of smells good to me up here. It smells like cow crap, but it also smells good. An old smell, like mothballs or rain in August. Smells like being a kid.
    One time, one of the guys let me drink some of the milk they make here. It came out of this big silver tank, and it still had all the cream in it, and it tasted so good. It made all the milk I'd ever tasted in my life taste like water. It was sweeter and thicker than normal milk, and a little bit sour too, like all the tastes that are supposed to be in there were still there. Then they pasteurize it and homogenize it and take all thegood parts out. I'd never tasted anything like that. It made me wish we lived on a farm.
    I keep going up the hill to the split-rail fence. I slip through and cut across the pasture toward the