Hometown Heartache
Excerpt
I watched from my bedroom window, peering through the branches of the huge oak tree growing at the corner of the front of the house. A large moving van backed slowly up the long, rambling gravel driveway. I held my breath, and repeated in a low whisper, “Please have a boy my age. Please have a boy my age.”
When the truck finally came to a stop, and the door of the cab opened, a cowboy hat appeared on someone about my size and I whooped with glee, pounding down the stairs and out the back door, slamming the screen door as I hollered over my shoulder, “They have a boy! They have a boy!”
My mom called after me as she iced a chocolate cake. “Nash Steven Nabry, you get back here this instant. The last thing they need is you underfoot.”
But I ignored her, running pell-mell to the truck, kicking up rock behind me. Even now I can recall the scratch of my tennis shoes as I made a sliding stop in front of her, scattering gravel left and right, and the way the rock dust filled my throat and nostrils as much as my indignation. “You’re a girl,” I spat.
“Nash!” my mother’s appalled voice yelled from several yards behind me. I still don’t understand how she could always hear every impolite word I spoke, yet not hear me when I called up the stairs asking her where the cereal was. Then Chloe’s father came around the back end of the truck, and the grownups introduced themselves while I stared at Chloe and Chloe stared at me like this was a showdown at the O.K. Corral, which was fitting considering her outfit. Looking back, my mind automatically added the dramatic, high-pitched, whistling notes from the theme song to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, a Clint Eastwood movie my brother, Ed, liked to watch. Chloe rubbed a fist in her eye, which probably was irritated by the chalky, drifting dust I raised from the gravel, squinting the other eye in the bright sunshine as she glared at me.
