Southern Cross Read Free Page A

had gotten too warm
in the car. Too close. I thought again of her body against mine; the way her
lips had tasted, the words she’d whispered. Don’t let go, okay? Not until
you have to.
    “We
should go in,” she said.
    I
didn’t disagree.

Chapter Two
DANNY
     
     
     
    The
house was busting at the seams with every relative they’d ever had, and then
some. Danny had never been much for family anyway, and now to have everyone
here carrying on about how much they loved his daddy and what a good man Wyatt
Durham had been and how he was probably setting at Jesus’s right hand right
then… it just got to be too much, is all.
    He
went back out, careful to wait ‘til Rick—his twin brother, the good son—and
Ida, the baby of the family, were out of the way. He cruised past the grove of
birches and the horse barn and the creek, ignoring the howl of the dogs and the
threat of rain. Just keep moving , he kept saying to himself. He was
seventeen now: too old to cry; too young to go off and get blisterin’ drunk
like his college buddies. Well… at least, not right now, with his family
around. Maybe later.
    Instead,
he kept going ‘til he reached the old tree house his daddy built him and Rick
when they was just kids. He climbed the rickety wooden rungs nailed into the
trunk of a solid old oak, pushed open the trapdoor, and went on in.
    You
hadn’t oughta leave your mama alone on a day like today , he imagined his daddy saying. Danny pulled a joint from
his back pocket and fetched a lighter from a cubby hole built into the
treehouse. He sat back, knees just about to his chin to make room in the
cramped space, and leaned his back up against the rough bark. You got a lot
of nerve, boy, smokin’ dope today.
    “Quiet,
old man,” Danny growled. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. His
throat hurt, a lump in there he hadn’t been able to get rid of since his mama
broke the news.
    A
branch snapped somewhere below. Danny opened his eyes. The weed was already
taking hold, taking the edge off just enough.
    “That
you, Ida?” he hollered down. “I thought you was off somewhere.”
    “Don’t
get your panties in a bunch,” a girl’s voice called up to him. He smiled,
relief washing over him like warm summer rain. “It’s just me.”
    Half
a minute later, Casey Clinton poked her head up through the hatch. Casey played
bass in Danny’s band. She was a couple years younger than him, about a head
shorter, and she was about the only person he could talk to these days about…
well, anything, really. Music, family, life, school… he could say anything to
Casey. It didn’t hurt that she was the prettiest girl in the sophomore
class—not that there was anything going on between them, of course.
    She
pulled herself up through the hatch and settled across from him. He passed her
the joint.
    “They
lookin’ for me over at the house?” he asked.
    “Nah.
I had to scoot, though, in case your mama saw me.”
    Danny’s
mother hated Casey—said she come from trash and was all about devil music.
They’d fought about it too much over the years; now, Casey just kept her head
down whenever his mama was around.
    “What
about Rick?” he asked.
    “He
saw me, but he won’t say anything.”
    “You
sure about that? If he thinks it’ll earn him more points with Mama…”
    Casey
took a good long drag and held the smoke in before she passed the joint back to
him, shaking her head. “You oughta go easy on him—he ain’t so bad as you make
him out to be. What’s he ever done to you?”
    “Nothin’,”
he said. “The kid just bothers me is all.”
    It
came out sulky. It felt like most of his life he’d been standing off on the
sidelines doing his own thing while his brother couldn’t take a leak without
their mama wanting to throw a parade. Rick was the highest ranked high school
tennis player in the state. He got the lead in all the school plays and only
dated girls their folks liked and already knew where he was headed