Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 77980 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77980 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Ted scowled. “Whatever. You guys are fucking losers. We have better stuff to do with our time.” And then Ted and his buddies walked away. It was a whole lot easier to pick on just one person than if the odds were a little more even and someone like Clint, who had a lot of friends, was there. Plus, he didn’t think they wanted to do anything anyway. They just liked to talk crap and look like they were big and brave, but Ted’s daddy would kill him if he got caught fighting at school. He was the pastor and practiced that whole iron-rod thing.
Clint turned to August, smiling, but August just crossed his arms. “I don’t need you to stick up for me. I can take care of myself!”
Well, that hadn’t been what he’d expected, but it was kind of cool too. “I was just trying to be nice.”
“Because you think I can’t take care of myself.”
Clint didn’t answer because August was right. He wasn’t quite sure why that was a bad thing, though. Wasn’t it nice to stick up for the underdog? “If they wanted to, they could have beaten you up.”
“Yeah, but I would’ve gone down fighting.” He puffed out his chest some, and Clint smiled. He liked Little August Reynolds. Clint didn’t think his insides were that little at all.
“Wanna hang out?” he asked August.
“Huh?” August’s brows pulled together, little lines etched into his forehead.
“Hang out. And I saw you the other day, cutting class and going through the fence. Where were you going? What do you do back there?”
“Why do you want to hang out with me?”
Clint shrugged. “Am I not supposed to? It’s cool if you say no.” August intrigued him, but he wasn’t going to beg someone to be friends with him.
And when August turned and walked away, Clint watched him go.
But over the next few weeks, he noticed August staring at him, and on the last Friday before winter break, August approached him. Clint was planning on going to play football in the park with his friends and was about to go meet them in front of the school, when August sneaked up on him while he was at his locker. “There’s a creek.”
“Where? I don’t see one.” He turned his head back and forth, scanning the hallway jokingly.
“No, dork. In the woods. It’s like almost a mile in, but there’s also a trail on the other side so I can walk home. Leads close to my street.”
“And you hang out at the creek?”
“Yep.”
They stood there for a second, and when August didn’t add anything more, Clint said, “Are you asking me if I wanna go?”
August shrugged. “Guess so.”
“Okay,” Clint replied.
“Okay,” August said too.
Clint ditched his friends and sneaked out through the back fence with August so no one would see them go. Sure enough, there was a trail through the woods. They were quiet for the first few minutes. He didn’t really know what to say to August. Clint didn’t know a lot about him. “So…”
“I’m not a wuss,” August said.
“I know.”
“But you didn’t at first.”
“I was trying to be nice.” Geez, what was with this guy?
A couple more beats of silence before August said, “I know.”
Oh, well, that was better.
They kept walking. The air felt like rain was coming, but Clint had grown up in Harmony. He didn’t give a shit about a little rain. “Do you have plans for winter break?” he asked.
They chatted as they walked the rest of the way to the creek. Clint had never been this far back there. It was quiet, and in one spot in the creek, rocks piled up about three feet high, creating a mini waterfall. Beside the creek was another large rock that—“Holy cow. It looks like a chair.”
“Yep. Pretty cool, huh?” August jumped onto it and sat. “The stream goes all the way to the lake, feeding into it, but that’s miles and miles down.”
Clint knew where it came out, but he’d never followed it in this direction. He climbed beside August, then went to the little rock waterfall and sat right in the middle of it, legs hanging over. August laughed.
“You like to hang out here a lot?”
August shrugged. “Sometimes.”
“What do you like to do for fun?”
“I like animals a lot. I want to be a veterinarian. I once saved a bird who hurt its wing.”
And just like that, they were friends. They didn’t hang out all the time. August still kept to himself, and Clint still had his other friends. When they spent time together, it was just the two of them. August didn’t like Clint’s friends, and they thought August was a nerd. People sometimes asked him why he was friends with August, but he just shrugged and said, “’Cause I like him.” And he did. August was funny when you got to know him. He was also brave and didn’t take crap from anyone.