Chasing Redbird Read Online Free Page B

through the screen door, and there on the porch swing was Tommy Salami. Beside him was May.
    I crept back inside, stumbled through the house and out the other side. I made my way down the drive and waited. One hour. Two. At last, I saw Tommy Salami leaving, and I stepped out.
    â€œZinny?” he said. “Where did you come from?”
    I didn’t answer. There weren’t any words.
    â€œI owe you some thanks,” he said. “You must’ve put in a good word about me with May. She’s going to the dance with me. How ’bout that?” He had a grin so wide you’d have thought he had a couple extra sets of teeth. “You’re a real peach, Zinny.”
    All I could think was that I was Zinnia Taylor: idiot . I was mortally embarrassed and certain-sure I’d die in my sleep of complete and total humiliation. I didn’t amount to a bucket of spit.
    There were more boys like Tommy Salami. There was Jerry Abbott and Mickey Torke, Slim Giblin and Roger Pole. They all plied me with sugar-mouthed flattery and gifts, and they all eventually ended up with May. I might as well have been a pig in a dog race.
    I don’t know why these boys didn’t try to go through Gretchen or Bonnie to win May, or why they didn’t just pursue her directly. I guess Gretchen gave off this air that she wouldn’t put up with any nonsense, and Bonnie was probably too young. And maybe these boys were afraid of May, afraid she’d turn them down. Nobody was afraid of me. I must have seemed as quiet and as harmless as a mothball.
    But after Tommy Salami, I was not as trusting, and by the time poor old Roger Pole came along, I was downright nasty. When he offered me a bag of popcorn, I threw a double duck fit and said, “Take your stupid popcorn and choke on it.”
    After Jake gave me the bottle caps, I just felt sad. I sorted through them that evening. There were nearly a hundred. He’d found some rare soda tops, no longer made, and many I’d never seen before. They were all clean, and he must have known how to pop the insides, because none of them were bent. I added them to the others already in my closet.
    I had lots of collections: lucky stones (small and smooth and white); zinnia seeds; key chains; buttons; colored pencils; keys; shoelaces (all tied together in one long piece); bottles; bookmarks; postcards; and the bottle caps.
    May said it was a sign of my stinginess, that I hoarded things like this. For me, it didn’t feel like stinginess. It felt as if I were protecting these things. I wouldn’t let anything happen to them. I wouldn’t let anyone take them away.
    These collections were sheltered in individual boxes crammed into the closet I shared with Bonnie. May called our closet “the pig closet” because it was a mad jumble of things, while the closet May and Gretchen shared at the other end of the room was so neat and tidy it was hard to believe people really used it.
    That night after I had put away my new bottle caps, and the four of us girls were all in bed, with Bonnie fast asleep and me pretending to be, I listened to May and Gretchen whispering.
    â€œDo you think Jake is handsome?” May asked.
    â€œHis hair is nice,” Gretchen said.
    â€œAnd he has nice muscles.”
    â€œMm.”
    They were quiet for a few minutes and I thought maybe they had gone to sleep, but then May said, “I wish Zinny didn’t collect things.”
    â€œHow come?”
    â€œIt’s so—so immature, don’t you think?”
    â€œI collect green things,” Gretchen admitted.
    â€œThat’s different. That’s not immature. But bottle caps—now that’s immature!”
    They laughed.
    Too bad , I thought. It made me even more determined to keep on collecting them. But then, in the quiet, in the dark, I wondered if they were right. Was I immature? Questions like this can keep you awake a long time.

CHAPTER 9

B ACK IN THE D