It's a Little Haywire Read Free Page B

wrinkles her nose like I’m
disgusting. Mr. Chan thanks her for coming and she pulls on the
door. I drop my basket and rush to hold the door open for her.
    Mikala doesn’t say thanks. I wonder why
I bother being nice to her.
    When I get back to the counter, I
realize I’d forgotten the bread.
    “Just leave your basket here, Owen,” Mr.
Chan says. He sees something out the window. I look outside to see
what he’s looking at. It’s the guy in the box. He’s crossing the
street. “I’ll be right back,” Mr. Chan says.
    I finally find the bread aisle. I can
see out the front window from where I stand. Mr. Chan and the guy
in the box are talking. Then Mr. Chan hands him a bucket, turns and
walks back in. I quickly turn around so Mr. Chan can’t tell that
I’d been spying on them.
    I take time to squeeze the loaves—that’s
what they do on the commercials—and watch the guy in the box. He
has the bucket and takes out a wet sponge. He starts to wash the
windows. I’m much closer to him than I was yesterday when I spotted
him on the street. His skin is tanned and deep lines fan out from
dark eyes. His arms look strong and I wager a guess that he used to
work at the mill. His nails are rimmed black with dirt.
    The guy in the box spots me through the
glass. Our eyes meet.
    A weird little nervous ripple shoots
through me. I spin around and grab the first loaf of bread my hand
touches and march to the till.
    I pay for my basket of stuff, which
fills two plastic bags, then say goodbye to Mr. Chan. I make sure
not to make eye contact with the guy in the box when I leave.
    These bags are heavy! A stupid burn runs
through my forearms to match the stupid burn in my gut. Man, why
does that guy in the box bug me so much? Maybe it’s because I’m
afraid he’ll stare at me and my stupid new clothes the same way
that Mikala stared at my candy bars. The way she looked at me, made
me feel like a freak, like it’s a crime to eat a candy bar now? And
why do I care what they think anyway?
    I puff heavily through my nose like a
dragon. I wish I were a dragon. Then I could fly the heck out of
Haywire and scorch the sky with my “outta here” smoke
signature.
    Gramps sees me coming and opens the
patio door. I drop the bags dramatically on the kitchen floor.
    “Mission accomplished?” Gramps asks. He
empties the bags, putting the milk in the fridge and leaving the
other items out on the counter.
    “Yeah.” I shrug like it was no big
deal.
    “That’s good.”
    I wash up and we make lunch together. I
spread the peanut butter, he spreads the jam.
    “Do you want to sit outside, Gramps?”
It’s just too nice to stay in this warm stuffy room.
    “Lead the way.” Gramps holds the door
open and lets it shut with a squeak behind us.
    We sit in a couple old lawn chairs, the
kind with wide strips of plastic weaved together and wrapped around
an aluminum frame. Some of the strips are fraying and torn, but
Gramps doesn’t look worried about falling through or anything. We
face the creek as we eat and I’m tempted to tell him about my weird
fog, slash, train, slash, ghost experience. Will he think I’m nuts?
Or maybe he’s seen it too. I swallow the last bit of my sandwich. I
decide to risk it, but then Gramps suddenly stands up.
    “Nature calls,” he says with an
embarrassed grin. “When you get to be my age, it’s like she never
stops calling.”
    Just as the squeaky door slams shut
behind him, Mikala comes bounding into the yard.
    “Owen True!” Her face is flushed red.
“Ruby’s choking!”
    I don’t wait another second before
running beside her back to the Sweets’ house.
    “You know what to do, right?” Mikala
puffs. “They teach you these things in the city, don’t they?”
    I just nod. My mind is frantically
flipping through the class at school where the community nurse
visited and gave us instructions on basic first aid. What to do
about choking was one of her lessons. The Heimlich manoeuvre. I
remember it.
    Of