Total pages in book: 185
Estimated words: 180510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 903(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 602(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 180510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 903(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 602(@300wpm)
Colten inches his head side to side and repeats himself from earlier. “You’re mine. Not his.”
Colten’s, not Winston’s.
I can’t separate it quite like that.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“I heard my parents talking about your mom,” Josie said as we were biking to the pool the summer before sixth grade.
“What were they saying?”
“That your mom is … hmm, what was the word? Struggling? Yeah, I think that was the word. They said she needs to get help.”
“Help doing what?”
“I think it’s because she cries a lot, and my mom said she’s sometimes in her robe all day. She gets the mail in her robe, and she takes you to piano lessons in her robe.”
“She’s sad because my dad’s living in a trailer.”
“If it were me, I’d be sad because my husband cheated on me. No … not sad. I’d be mad. I’d probably hurt him.”
I laughed as we locked our bikes to the rack by the pool entrance. “What would you do?”
“Blunt trauma to his testicles.”
“What?” I didn’t hear her right. Did I?
“My mom said I should never kick a boy in the testicles because it can cause serious damage. I looked it up. Pain. Swelling. Even a rupture with lots of blood in your scrotum.”
“My what?”
“Scrotum. It’s the part of you that looks like a turkey and holds your testicles, letting them hang low from your body to keep cool. If they get too warm, your sperm die.”
“Shh …” My cheeks filled with hot embarrassment when the teenaged girl checking our pool passes gave us a weird look. She must have heard Josie say testicles and sperm.
I veered right near the boys’ locker rooms, and Josie went left toward the girls’. Meeting on the other side, we searched for a place to keep our towels and bags.
“If I had a husband, and he cheated on me, I’d kick him hard in the balls with my boots. My mom said it could cause a guy to not be able to make children someday. And that seems like a fair punishment for cheating, don’t you think?”
I’d been kicked in the balls on more than one occasion, usually an accident. Just talking about it made my stomach hurt. “I don’t think my mom will kick my dad in the nuts. She says she still loves him.”
“I’d kick him in the testicles, but I think my parents would ground me.”
“Don’t call them testicles.” I dropped my bag next to the fence.
“That’s what they’re called.”
“You sound like a doctor.”
“Maybe someday I’ll be a doctor, so it’s a good idea for me to keep calling them testicles instead of nuts or balls.”
I never thought she had a loud voice until we were in public talking about testicles. Then it felt like she was using a megaphone, and everyone could hear her.
“The one exception to kicking someone in the testicles …”
Here we go again.
“… is if someone is trying to kidnap you or touch your genitals. A kidnapper or a pedophile. Or it could be the same person, right?”
I had no idea what a pedophile was, and I wasn’t going to ask her until we were someplace private for fear that she’d use the word genitals ten times in her loudest voice.
“If a pedophile kidnapped you, they could tie you up and touch you whenever they wanted to. I suppose that would be easier than stalking kids outside of schools. Right?”
I gathered that a pedophile was a pervert. That’s what my mom called adults who touched kids’ privates. I felt certain Josie’s dad talked with her a lot about pedophiles or perverts. Josie was eleven going on thirty.
“Do you want a grape ice pop?” I asked her, desperately wanting to change the subject.
“Orange.”
I nodded, escaping to the concession stand before she could talk about … anything. The second I returned with the ice pop, she started up again.
“I think I’m going to start spending time with your mom like when you’re at baseball practice. Chad spends all of his time playing video games. And you guys don’t have a dog or any other family pet, so I’ll spend time with her. Then maybe she’ll not be so sad. Maybe she’ll get dressed.”
Even at eleven, I knew there was something special about Josephine Watts. She wasn’t trying to be anything more than the girl who treated other people the way she wanted to be treated. Of course, I didn’t tell her that, but maybe I should have.
“You can be our pet.” I laughed at my own joke.
Josie attempted to give me a sneer, but she started giggling. “I won’t even pee on the carpet. My dad said we can’t get a dog because they pee on the carpet, and then you have to pay a carpet cleaner to suck up the mess, and they charge you a whole bunch of money for every visit. He said we can’t afford a dog because they can barely afford Benji and me. I know they really mean him, not me, because the only time they call the carpet cleaner is when Benji makes a mess.”