The Seventh Most Important Thing Read Free Page A

thing of all to his dad…that was the final straw. Did the old man think it was okay to steal things from dead people? Did he wander around the neighborhood waiting for people to die so he could run off with their favorite possessions? Was that what he did? Or was he mocking Arthur’s dad by wearing his hat? Was it some kind of sick joke?
    Arthur knew his mind wasn’t thinking straight, but he couldn’t control it. It was like a runaway train, racing faster and faster toward a wall.
    He saw the pile of crumbled bricks next to a closed-down building on the street corner. He picked up one. It was the only thing he could think of doing. He would punish the old man for what he’d done. He would punish death for what it had done. He would punish everybody.
    The brick felt cold and rough in his hand. It was a dangerous thing to be holding—he recognized that much. A small voice in the back of Arthur’s mind tried to tell him to stop, to think about what he was doing.
    Arthur told the voice to go to hell.
    And then he raised his arm and threw.

FIVE
    I f it had been up to the judge, he would have thrown the book at Arthur T. Owens. He didn’t believe a word of the boy’s story.
    “So I think seeing him wearing my dad’s hat was what made me, you know, do what I did,” Arthur said, finishing his stumbling explanation.
    Right. The judge didn’t buy it. In his opinion, the boy was just using his father’s death as an excuse for causing trouble.
    All you had to do was look at the facts in the kid’s paperwork: Arthur had a father who’d dropped out of school, who’d been in jail a couple of times for minor crimes, and who’d died drunk. What were the chances his son would turn out any different? He was already heading down the same path.
    “In my experience, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” the judge said to Arthur.
    But James Hampton didn’t see it that way.
    After Arthur and the judge finished talking, Mr. Hampton stood up and asked the bailiff if he could have a quick word with the judge. The bailiff asked if it could wait, and James Hampton said as politely as an army soldier, “No, sir, with all due respect, it can’t.”
    Arthur was still having a hard time believing the Junk Man and James Hampton were the same person. He kept wondering if it was some kind of trick, if maybe the guy was an actor or something.
    The two men—James Hampton and the judge—stepped out of the room, and the “quick word” stretched into an hour. The courtroom was dismissed for lunch.
    Although he wasn’t the least bit hungry, Arthur sat in the courthouse hallway with his mother and ate the baloney and cheese sandwich she had brought for him. It tasted like baloney-flavored cardboard, but he didn’t want his mom to start crying again if he turned it down.
    She looked like she’d been crying for a year. Usually, his mom’s makeup was perfect, and her dark hair never changed. It was always styled with the same big, glossy waves held in place with the same white velvet headband.
    But now her face was puffy and splotched with red. She kept twisting a pink tissue in her fingers, until it fell into shreds on the black dress she was wearing. Pretty soon, she looked as if she was covered in melting pink snowflakes.
    Arthur wasn’t sure why his mother had worn her funeral dress to court that day. Was she already expecting the worst? He’d had to wear his funeral suit because it was the only suit he owned.
    “I’m sorry, Mom,” Arthur said for the thousandth time.
    He’d said it every day she’d come to visit him in juvie. He’d put it at the bottom of every letter he’d written to her. He’d repeated it that morning when she’d brought the suit for him to wear.
    “You should have let me know something was wrong,” his mother replied for the thousandth time. “Your sister lost a tooth and got an A in reading this week. Did I tell you that already?” she asked, her eyes spilling over with tears again.