You'll Always Remember Me Read Online Free Page B

find out where he had the thing hidden.
    I dressed thinking well, only two more days and Tommy gets it. I’d be glad when it was over. Maybe all this tension would ease up then and Marie wouldn’t cry so much because once he was dead there wouldn’t be anything she could do about it. Time would go by and eventually she would forget him. One person more or less isn’t so important in the world anyway, no matter how good a guy he is.
    Everything went swell Wednesday right through breakfast and until after we were marching out of the chapel and into the schoolroom. Then I ran into Pushton who was trotting around with his bugle tucked under his arm. I stopped and looked him up and down.
    His little black eyes didn’t flicker. He just said, “Next time you bother me, Thorpe, I’m going to report you.”
    â€œGo ahead, punk,” I said, “and see what happens to you.”
    I went on into school then, burning up at his guts, talking to me that way.
    I was still burned up and sore at the guy when a lucky break came, for me, that is, not Pushton. It was during the afternoon right after we had been dismissed from the classroom for the two-hour recreation period.
    I went into the main building, which was prohibited in the daytime so that I had to sneak in, to get a book I wanted to read. It was under my pillow. I slipped up the stairs, crept into my wing, got the book and started out. It was then that I heard a pounding noise.
    I looked around, then saw it was coming from the eleven-year-old wing.
    I walked in and there it was! You wouldn’t have believed anything so beautiful could have been if you hadn’t seen it with your own eyes. At least that was the way I felt about it. For, who was it, but Pushton.
    The bugler on duty has the run of the main building and it was natural enough that he was here but I hadn’t thought about it. There was a new radio set, a small portable, beside his bed. I saw that the wires and ear phone—which you have to use in the dormitory—were connected with the adjoining bed as well and guessed that it belonged to another cadet. But Pushton was hooking it up. He was leaning half-way out the window trying, pounding with a hammer, to make some kind of a connection on the aerial wire.
    Nothing could have been better. The window was six stories from the ground with cement down below. No one knew I was in the building. I felt blood surge into my temples. My face got red, hot red, and I could feel fever throbbing in my throat. I moved forward slowly, on cat feet, my hands straight at my sides. I didn’t want him to hear me. But I was getting that dizzy feeling now. My fingers were itching.
    Then suddenly I lunged over, I shoved against him. He looked back once, and that was what I wanted. He looked back for an instant, his fat face green with the most unholy fear I have ever seen. Then I gave him another shove and he was gone. Before he could call out, before he could say a word, he was gone, falling through the air!
    I risked jumping up on the bed so I could see him hit, and I did see him hit. Then I got down and straightened the bed and beat it out.
    I ran down the stairs as fast as I could. I didn’t see anybody. More important, no one saw me. But when I was on the second floor I ran down the hall to the end and lifted the window. I jumped out here, landing squarely on my feet.
    I waited for a minute, then I circled the building from an opposite direction. My heart was pounding inside me. It was difficult for me to breathe. I managed to get back to the play field through an indirect route.
    Funny thing, Pushton wasn’t seen right away. No one but myself had seen him fall. I was on the play field at least ten minutes, plenty long enough to establish myself as being there, before the cry went up. The kids went wild. We ran in packs to the scene.
    I stood there with the rest of them looking at what was left of Pushton. He wouldn’t blow any