Shine - Lauren Myracle [54]
“Uh-huh, that’s great, Robert,” I said. I took hold of my bike and toed up the kickstand.
“You come here about Patrick?” he said.
I didn’t know what to make of his question.
“I listened in,” he bragged. He laughed and did a sideways nod at the open windows. “I’m good at being sneaky, ain’t I? I hear all sorts of stuff.”
“Like what?” I almost said, but at the last moment, I avoided the trap. Robert would talk my ear off if I let him, boasting about one thing or another, and none of them more interesting than pinecones.
“Yes, Robert, you’re good at being sneaky,” I said, swinging my leg over the frame. “And now, I gotta go.”
“Naw, wait,” he said. Mucus snaked out of his nose. He sucked it back in while at the same time stepping closer, as if along with his snot he wanted to suck every ounce of attention from me that he could. “I like Patrick, even if he is a spoilsport.”
“Huh?”
“He made me go home when it wasn’t even my bedtime. I don’t even have a bedtime. Duh.”
I cocked my head. “Are you talking about the night your sister and everybody went to Suicide Rock?”
“Everyone but me,” Robert complained. “I’ve never gotten to go there at night, not even once. And the others didn’t care if I went. But Patrick was all, ‘Robert’s too little. Robert has to go home.’”
“He was just looking out for you,” I said.
“Only I don’t need him looking out for me,” Robert said. He flipped his wrist. “And ain’t it just like a fairy to get his panties in a wad over something that’s none of his business.”
“Robert, don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t call him that.”
“A fairy? But he is one.”
I was too tired for this. Most everybody called Patrick names, so it wasn’t as if I was going to change Robert’s way of thinking.
“Ohhhhh,” Robert said. “You think it’s one of those hate words.”
“It is one of those hate words,” I said. “And you just said you like Patrick, so why would you call him something hateful?”
He hawked a loogie and rubbed dirt over it with his bare foot. “I like him well enough. I don’t wanna be kissy-kissy with him, but I didn’t clonk him in the head with a baseball bat, if that’s what you’re asking.”
That wasn’t what I was asking. Robert was a kid, and an undernourished, puny one at that. He didn’t have the strength to clonk someone in the head.
“Well, I like Patrick, too,” I replied. “Your sister says he’s gonna be okay. That’s good news, isn’t it?”
“If you say so,” he said fake-mysteriously. “Only if I were you, I wouldn’t go around believing everything Bailee-Ann says.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “And why’s that?”
“’Cause she lies, that’s why.”
I glanced at the house with its open windows. Then I put down my bike’s kickstand and stepped further into the shadows. He scampered behind me, and I groaned inwardly, knowing I was wasting my time.
Robert was what you’d call an unreliable narrator, that was the book term for it. The kind of kid who was never wrong about anything, who always had a reason for why the pinecone didn’t hit the tree.
“All right, Robert,” I said when we were out of Bailee-Ann’s hearing distance. “What do you want to tell me?”
His face lit up. He liked the low pitch of my voice, the intimacy of sharing secrets. He stepped close, put his lips right up to my ear, and said . . . nothing. Just inhaled deep, like he was breathing me in.
“Robert.” It was a matter of will not to pull away from him. As I said, it wasn’t his fault, but he was a boy who ate his boogers and didn’t bathe often enough. Who without provocation said things like “I gotta go drain my willy” because he was under the mistaken impression that it made him seem manly.
“You smell like raspberries,” he said, his breath warm. He burrowed into my hair, and I drew away.
“Eww, Robert, gross. It’s called shampoo. You buy it at the store. Now, do you have something to tell me or not?”
His face closed over. “You don’t have to be mean about it, bitch.”
“What’d you just call me?”
“I called you a bitch, bitch.”
My mouth fell open. I used to kiss Robert’s boo-boos back in the day. I probably even changed