Kipp The Kid Read Free Page B

to tease Jane but thought better of
it. “Yes, it is…morning, I mean.” Jane shot him a curious glance
and then smiled much more warmly than he had anticipated. He
returned a weak, uncomfortable smile. I hope she didn’t notice I
was perving, Kipp thought and wondered whether she could read his
mind. He must have turned red, because Jane started giggling.
     
    “Do you have a girlfriend?” Kipp’s grumps had asked
out of nowhere one afternoon as he sat rocking on his chair on the
porch.
     
    “Not for another twenty years Grandpa”, Kipp answered
politely and then rolled his eyes when grumps wasn’t looking.
     
    “Well, there’s plenty of time for that.” As he said
it Kipp’s gran could be heard calling out to him from the
kitchen.
     
    “Stan, you have to get the chickens in…and get me
some eggs while you’re at it or we’ll be eaten stale bread with
nothing on it for tea.”
     
    “Do you have a girlfriend?” asked Jane suddenly and
the image of his grumps rocking on the porch replayed in his mind.
He thought about giving the same reply, but decided to lie
instead.
     
    “Yes. Yes I do as a matter of fact. Though, she’s
older than you and taller too.”
     
    In his short years on this planet, Kipp has struggled
to understand the women in his life. The only exception was his
mother. He had understood her perfectly well. But the twins who
walked their dogs were like aliens and his gran was a whole other
beast. His girl cousins (Jack’s sisters) only ever complained about
how hot it was whenever they visited for Summer. So he hadn’t yet
learnt there were certain things you should never do. One is
complain about a woman’s mood and two is that the heart of a girl
is fragile and easily broken.
     
    The warm smile which had so easily formed on Jane’s
face was just as soon gone. It left as easily as the water
squelching down the drain when you empty the sink, only faster.
Jane got up and pretended to play with the smoking sticks in the
fire pit. He could tell her mood had changed, but hadn’t quite put
his finger on why.
     
    “Does she have a name?”
     
    “Umm…no…I mean, Noelene.”
     
    “Noelene? That’s an odd name. How old is she?”
     
    “How old?”
     
    “Yes, you said she is older, so how old?”
     
    “Um…ahhh…sixteen.” Kipp gulped when he realized how
stupid it sounded. But he was committed.
     
    “Sixteen? But you’re only twelve.”
     
    “Thirteen,” he stated proudly. “Just last month.”
     
    “Wow, you are almost old enough to be her…her baby
brother,” she said, teasing him. Then a weak smile returned as she
was beginning to realize he was fibbing.
     
    Kipp said nothing in reply. He was busy packing up
the camp and clearing away the rubbish. By now he’d usually be down
one of the shafts or scaling the engine house to see the view of
the ocean. Not many kids he knew could climb the five story engine
houses dotting the district. He only knew of one other kid that
claimed to have, but nobody ever saw him do it. But Kipp could,
though he had to scale the broken corner, which had bits of brick
and stone protruding in a kind of jagged ladder for part of the way
up. Then there was some steel reinforcing mesh someone had attached
to keep the stone from falling out.
     
    “What do you do here…when no one else’s around, I
mean?” She asked as she waited for him to finish. Kipp rolled his
eyes and then turned to face her. He couldn’t make up his mind
whether she was always this chatty. At home, next door, she always
seemed preoccupied with her little area in the back yard, out by
the Aleppo Pines. Someone, he assumed her father, had built a cubby
house consisting of several staggered platforms and half walls. It
looked like it had been there for a while. He sometimes watched her
climb the rope ladder gracefully, her hair dangling down behind her
like Rapunzel in the old fairy tale.
     
    “I climb,” he said, boasting.
     
    “I can climb,” she