The Adored Read Free Page A

doing down there. Get away from there.” CJ looked up. Then panic overcame him. “She thinks I did this,” he thought. For the rest of his life, he would wonder why he did what he did next. He stood up, and as life oozed from the body on the ground, he ran out of the alley, taking the same path that Billy Stevens had a moment before.
    CJ ran all the way home, and as he stood in the yard behind his house, he heard sirens in the distance. He tried to stop sweating, to quiet his heart before going in. He knew his mother would see something was wrong. He could not hide problems from her.
    He waited a long time in the dark with his back up against the rotting clapboards of his home. He walked to the pear tree at the back of the small yard and sat with his back against it. He could not believe his friend Billy stabbed that man. Maybe it wasn’t Billy, he thought, and yet as soon as he thought it, he knew it was Billy. But why? He wouldn’t ask, he would never tell, he would never see Billy again. He prayed, “God, please take me out of here, take my mother and me away from this.” And as he prayed, it came to him that God would not take him out of this life. He would have to do it himself. He would get back into sports in school, stop wasting his life, start doing homework, and going to church again with his mother. “Only please, God, no more of this,” he whispered in the dark.
    Louise Strong was in the kitchen drying dishes in the wall-long cast iron sink as CJ walked in the door. “CJ, my, my, ten thirty on a Friday night. You feeling alright, honey?”
    “Sure, Mom, just tired; besides, I want to get up early tomorrow and look for a weekend job.”
    “Oh, my heart,” Louise Strong said, feigning an attack, “no, not that, not a job.”
    “Come on, Mom, knock it off. I’m seventeen; don’t you think it’s about time I got a job?”
    “Yes I do, CJ; I’m just surprised you do too.”
    “Maybe if I work, you can give up one of your jobs.”
    “Oh, wouldn’t that be nice. Tell me what brought on this rush of responsibility?”
    “Nothing,” he came back quickly and nervously and continued, “Well, let’s just say I’m growing up.” With that he turned toward the hallway, kissed his mother on the way by, and said, “Good night, Mom.”
    Louise Strong put her arms around her son’s waist and hugged him. She sensed a shudder as he hugged her; he lowered his head so that his cheek rested upon her head. “Son, are you alright?”
    “Yes, Mom, just fine,” he answered, feeling the security of his mother’s arms tightly around him.
     
    Something happened. Louise Strong knew as her son went off to bed that something happened. She knew she would not find out from him, and she prayed it was not bad. She thought of how big he had become, still feeling him against her.
    Later, as she turned out the lights, she thought she must move her son and herself from this area. She feared for him as he was a good boy, but he was drifting. She could probably get an apartment over by the north part of Shippan Avenue. The area had become middle class black in the last few years as families who could, fled the growing bleakness that was Waterside. It was closer to Clairol, where she now worked, having been offered a job by a sympathetic manager after her husband died. An apartment there would also be closer to her second, part-time job, cleaning and washing floors twice weekly at Apple Manor, which she kept from CJ. He would not have appreciated her cleaning floors in his former baseball teammate’s home. She had merely told him it was an office building she worked in.
     
    As CJ awoke on Saturday at 9:00 a.m., he smiled, thankful it was Saturday. Then in the kitchen he heard Billy’s voice, “Morning, Aunt Louise.” The horrible panic from the night before returned instantly to CJ.
    Mrs. Strong turned around, pulling her hands out of the wringer washing machine to stick her cheek out to Billy as he walked by.
    And