The Boss Project(97)

“Can you put the ball down?” I said. “I’m playing a damn game.”

She tossed the solid orange ball into the air and caught it. “Don’t you sit in your room playing with your balls enough?”

I snagged the ball the next time she tossed it up. “You’re funny. But looks aren’t everything.”

She rolled her eyes. “Original, kid.”

Kid. My sister Lydia was fifteen, barely two years older than me, but she acted like our age difference was at least a decade. I glanced out the garage window. It had just started drizzling. “Why don’t you go to the store?”

“I just blow dried my hair.”

I shrugged. “So? Wear a hood.”

“If you don’t shut up and go, I’m going to have to call Dave...”

I set the five ball back on the table. “Good. Ask him to bring me a Big Mac. You know that threat stopped working when I was like six, right?”

“Big Macs are McDonald’s, doofus. Not Wendy’s.”

I shrugged and leaned over to take my shot, whacking the ball into the corner pocket. “Grams would’ve come in here to ask me herself if she wanted me to go. I know she asked you, and you’re just trying to pawn it off on me.”

Lydia shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. You have to listen to me because I’m older.”

“I hate to tell you, but that’s not a thing. You don’t get to order me around just because you’re a little older. But while you’re at the store, pick me up some peanut butter. We’re out.”

She scrunched up her nose. “How do you eat that stuff three times a day?”

“Don’t knock it until you try it.” I walked over to my sister and stood close, looking down at her. I was at least six inches taller already. “Maybe if you ate some, you could grow to be a normal size.”

“I’m five foot one. That is a normal size for a girl.”

I smirked. “If you say so…”

She folded her arms across her chest. “If I go, I’m not getting peanut butter for you. I’m only getting Grams’ sugar.”

I rolled my eyes. Of course. “Fine,” I grumbled. “I’ll go when I clear the table. But only because I want a sandwich.”

A little while later, I rode my bike to the market, all of three blocks away, and picked up sugar and peanut butter. But while I was in the store, the drizzle turned to a full-on downpour. I lifted my bike from under the awning. “Great.”

By the time I made it back to my grandmother’s, I was drenched from head to toe. I pressed the button to open the garage door, but as I did, a flash of long, blond hair streaked across Grams’s friend’s yard next door. I watched through the downpour as a girl slid across the wet grass and raced up the ladder to the treehouse in the back. On the fourth rung, she slipped and lost her grip, and landed flat on her ass on the ground. But she got right back up, looked over her shoulder toward the house, and began climbing again. The second time she made it almost to the top before her foot slipped. Somehow she kicked the ladder out from under her while trying to grab it with her legs. I thought she was going down with it, but she grabbed the treehouse and now dangled from it.

“Shit.”

I raced over to Milly’s yard. Rain pelted me in the face as I hurdled the little white picket fence and lifted the ladder from the grass, hoisting it back up next to the girl. She hooked her legs around it and managed to get herself back on. As soon as she was steady enough to climb again, she bolted up the last few rungs and into the treehouse, slamming the door behind her.

I waited a minute, but she didn’t come out again. And since the rain was definitely not letting up, I ran back to my grandmother’s. When I reached the garage, I heard a man yelling from inside Milly’s house. I figured the girl had probably done something wrong and gotten in trouble, so I put my bike back in the garage and minded my own business.

Inside, Grams took one look at me and shook her head. “Boy, you look like a drowned rat. What the heck are you doing playing out in that rain?”

I unzipped my sweatshirt and took out the bag I’d tucked inside to keep dry. “I went to get you the sugar you asked for.”

“You mean your sister’s sugar. She’s the one who wanted it to make rock candy.”

I freaking knew it. I shook my head. “She told me you wanted it.”

Grams chuckled. “Sounds about right. I’m one of eight, and shit flows downhill. I probably would’ve done the same thing to my little brother when we were your age.” Her phone started to ring, so she walked toward where it hung on the wall, motioning to my clothes. “Go get changed, and I’ll make you a snack.”

I was so soaked, I even had to change my damn underwear.

When I came back out, Grams was hanging up the phone. She pulled her raincoat from the coat closet and grabbed her car keys from the key holder that hung near the front door. “I have to run out. You and your sister be good.”

“It’s pouring. Where are you going?”

Grams shook her head. “To help a friend. I’ll explain when I get home.”

“Okay.”

After she left, I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. When I put the dirty butter knife in the sink, I looked out the window and noticed my grandmother’s hot rod in the neighbor’s driveway. A woman was getting in the passenger side. Grams’s friend Milly walked around the side of the house with her arm wrapped around the girl who’d almost fallen from the treehouse a little while ago. I watched as they all piled in, and then Grams took off, flying down the road.