Waiting for Augusta Read Online Free

the ball the first step toward me turning into a man who thought underpants should be worn on his head and barbecue sauce went inside shoes? I felt my throat again and swallowed. No. It was in there. The golf ball, at least, was real.
    â€œNumber two, Daddy’s come back from beyond to help me run away. And help me get rid of this ball in my throat. So, which is it?”
    Are you expecting an opinion? the clock asked. I’m a clock. Believe whatever you want. You want to get out of Hilltop or not?
    â€œFine.” Straightening my shoulders, I gave the clock a nod and stepped back into the kitchen. If you’re gonna try a new swing in life, you better be all in, Daddy once told me. “Okay,” I said to the urn. “We’ll go to Augusta.”
    Before Daddy could answer, the screen door slammed open, knocking against the wall in a way Mama hates. Standing there was the big-eyed, mean-glared girl, holding a stack of orange-red-smeared plates. “Who’s going to Augusta? And where do I put these dishes? Your mama wants pie out there.”
    â€œShe does?”
    The girl rolled her big eyes, and I got the idea that if her hands weren’t full, they’d go straight to her hips. “Fine, I want pie. Gimme a bunch and maybe those others’ll buy some. So, who’s going to Augusta? And who were you talking to in here?”
    My face got red as our special sauce. “I wasn’t talking to anyone.”
    The girl didn’t seem to mind the lie. She took a quick inventory of the room, which didn’t take long. There was the stained oak eating table, blue countertops along one wall with our big white sink and low cabinets set beneath, an old wooden icebox where Mama kept her needlepoint basket, the pantry with its open door showing a line of dented canned goods, a tall refrigerator Daddy’d ordered for Mama from a Sears catalog instead of the ladies’ hat she’d asked for, and an electric oven that Mama insisted be pushed right under the window to the side yard, to try to trick the heat into going outside where it belonged. Every piece could speak if I let it, reminding me of good times and bad ones.
    â€œDon’t mind me,” the girl said. “I’ll clean these dishes for you and collect a favor later. You can start by digging up some pie.” She walked the plates to the sink, turned on the faucet, and grabbed a dishcloth. Started washing like she owned the place.
    Her sureness didn’t match her jeans and Coca-Cola shirt, which were wrinkled and caked here and there with dried mud. The long-sleeved shirt tied around her waist looked like it belonged to a grown man, and it wasn’t any cleaner. Freckles sprinkled her face, and one side of her long, straw-straight ponytail had a piece of moss in it. There was a dark bruise on her elbow, and her sneakers looked like they’d already been used for a lifetime. There was old dirt on her neck, the kind of dust that could come from working in a windy field or from driving down the roads of Hilltop with car windows down. She was filthier than the plates she’d just washed.
    â€œSay, you look like a runner,” she said without turning.
    â€œHow’s that? And what kind of pie do you want? Apple or lemon cream?”
    â€œApple.” The back of her shoulders shrugged at me. “You just look twitchy. Plus, you told that girl you were thinking about running away.”
    I’d been over a hundred yards away when I talked to May. I would have been barely visible from where she’d sat.
    â€œYou couldn’t have heard me.”
    She sneered and raised a dusty eyebrow easy as anything, in a way I’d tried to do in the mirror a few times because it was one of Daddy’s signature moves. Eyebrow raise with a chin tilt and a head raise meant he’d caught me drawing or painting. Eyebrow raise with a wink and a back slap meant he was telling a joke to a barbecue