Hit and Run Read Free Page A

this time.
    â€œI’ll come back after supper,” I told her. I had nothing better to do. “I’ll fix it for you.” I didn’t know everything there was to know about home repairs, but I knew the basics. For sure I could fix a broken wooden step.
    â€œYou don’t have to do that,” she said, which is exactlywhat I expected. Mrs. Jhun never wanted to be a bother.
    â€œYou could hurt yourself,” I said. “You sure you don’t want me to get some more eggs for you?”
    Mrs. Jhun smiled. “Eggs can wait,” she said. Then she reached up and touched my cheek. Her hand was as soft as velvet. I knew what she was thinking without her saying a word.
    â€œSee you later, Mrs. Jhun,” I said.
    â€œJeez, what was that all about?” Vin asked when I finally crossed back over the street again.
    â€œAnd
who
was that?” Sal asked.
    â€œShe was a friend of my mother’s,” I said. “She’s nice.”
    â€œSpeaking of nice,” Vin said. And he started talking about the girl of his dreams again.

CHAPTER TWO
    Billy was sitting on the porch, drinking a beer, when I got home. Billy’s on the small side, and skinny—mostly from not eating properly. His straw-colored hair was always flopping into his eyes. He had to shove it aside every few minutes with an almost permanently grease-blackened hand. The front of his jeans was also streaked with black, and there were black smudges on his T-shirt. The first time people met Billy, they always thought he was my big brother, not my uncle. He’s only ten years older than me. He had been living with my mom when I was born and stayed with us until he turned eighteen, three years before Mom died. Mostly I thought of Billy as a brother, too—a big, messy, spoiled one. He was too lazy to bother much with being an authority figure.
    I counted the empty beer bottles under his chair. “Tough day at the garage?” I said.
    Billy’s eyes were watery as he turned to look at me.
    â€œYou got that right, Mikey.”
    My stomach rumbled. I’d had a doughnut and a carton of chocolate milk for breakfast and grabbed a burger and fries at Square Boy for lunch. But that was hours ago.
    â€œDid you go grocery shopping, Billy?”
    He gave me a look that said, Are you crazy?
    â€œYou’re the one working at a grocery store.”
    â€œYeah, but you’re the one with the money.”
    Billy shot me another look. “I wish!”
    I sighed. Things weren’t looking promising. Again.
    â€œSo, you eaten or what?”
    â€œI’m not hungry,” Billy said. “Besides, I’m going out. I’ll grab something later.”
    Great. My stomach was growling. And if Billy hadn’t picked up any food, and if he was going out anyway, that meant that I was looking at a can of Beefaroni or some soup for supper, or, if I wanted to venture beyond heating and into cooking, scrambled eggs. I went inside, remembering how it used to be on Saturday nights or, even better, on Sunday nights, when I’d blow into the house after a day of football or road hockey or bike riding with Vin. I’d barrel into the front hall and my mouth would start watering as I inhaled the smell of a chicken roasting in the oven or cupcakes cooling on a rack on the kitchen counter.
    My mom was a terrific cook. She didn’t make buckets of money as a bookkeeper, but one thing I never had to worry about was being hungry. In summertime shegrew vegetables in the backyard. Only weeds grew there these days. She had a big freezer in the basement—empty now except for the plastic bags of ice that Billy liked to have on hand in case his friends wanted to party. Four years ago, though, it had been filled with vegetables Mom had grown and frozen, and with strawberries and raspberries from pick-your-own farms. She stocked up on chicken and ground beef whenever the stores ran specials. The same with bread.