The Temptations of St. Frank Read Free

when they didn’t react properly to his outrage. He dug into his shirt pocket and pulled out a worn newspaper clipping. He unfolded it with shaky hands and thrust it at Dom. “Here. You read.”
    Dom looked at it and passed it on to Frank. The headline said, EXPERTS CLAIM BURNING LANDFILL IS A HEALTH HAZARD.
    â€œYou read!” the old man said, smashing his finger into the clipping in Frank’s hand. He scowled deeper. “Read!” He took the clipping back, folded it, and put it in Frank’s shirt pocket. “You read!” He abruptly turned around and stomped off toward a group of potato-faced old people just like himself.
    â€œWhat the fuck’s with him?” Dom said.
    â€œHuh?” Frank was distracted. He was staring at the pleated gray skirts of the Mother of Peace Academy for Girls uniform and the two girls who were wearing them. Frank focused on their bare legs, hems hiked well above the knee, skirts belling out around their asses. Frank’s heart was doing a Ginger Baker tom-tom beat. It was Yolanda and her friend Tina.
    Tina turned around and spotted him as if she had sensed him staring. She flashed her ironic—or was the word sardonic? he wasn’t sure—half-smile at him. Tina was tall and on the skinny side. Her hair was dirty blond, and she wore it short with short bangs—too short in Frank’s opinion. She had big eyes, but they had dark rims under them as if she needed a good night’s sleep, even though she never seemed sleepy. Just the opposite. She had a quick wit and a sharp tongue. She wasn’t bad looking really—she just wasn’t Yolanda.
    Yolanda was as tall as Tina but better built with shapelier legs and actual tits. She had long light-brown hair that hung below her shoulders and small but penetrating eyes. She was a little shy—but not retarded shy like some kids—just quiet, which made her kind of mysterious. She was a closed door that Frank wanted to open.
    Both girls were very smart. Honors students. He regretted for the millionth time that he wasn’t in 4H, the senior honors class at St. A’s, because if he was, he would’ve been able to take the special coed honors physics class. It was the only coed class either school offered, and it was held first period at St. A’s. He would have seen Yolanda in class every day, and they would’ve been dating by now because, face it, the geeks in that class all had slide rules for dicks. No competition whatsoever.
    If only…
    Yolanda turned around and started walking toward him, and his stomach clenched. This was what he’d wanted, to run into her, but he didn’t expect it to happen this quickly. He wished to hell Dom wasn’t there, dreading what embarrassing thing his friend might say. She had her books in her arms, carrying them close to her chest the way girls do. But she wasn’t looking at him. In fact she hadn’t even noticed him. She veered off toward Potato Man and put her hand on his shoulder, rubbing it affectionately. Frank could see that she was talking to Potato Man, and he wondered if they were speaking Ukrainian. Even though he’d been lusting after her for months, he’d only heard her voice a few times. He wasn’t sure, but he thought she had the tiniest trace of an accent. Of course he might have just imagined it because he wanted her to be exotic.
    She glanced over her shoulder and looked at Frank. At least he thought she was looking at him. He tried to read her expression, but she turned away and he couldn’t tell if she had recognized him or not. If she had, her lack of reaction wasn’t a good sign. Maybe she disapproved of him because he wasn’t in the honors class. Maybe she hated him. But why would she hate him? She didn’t know him. Was it because he was here in her neighborhood, on her turf? What the fuck? This wasn’t
West Side Story.
    Or worse, maybe she just didn’t give a