The Rule of Threes, Marcy Campbell [short novels to read .TXT] 📗

“Hey, watch what you’re doing,” Tony said.

A big white dollop of primer plopped from my brush onto the tarp.

“Oops!” I said. I was normally much more careful.

Tony went on. “She was dating this guy with a house painting business, and I worked for him in the summer.”

“That must have been kind of fun,” I said. I was picturing him out in the sunshine, building some arm muscles, daydreaming while he worked.

“Fun?” Tony said. “No. Not fun. Not unless you like to get up at the crack of dawn, and stand on a ladder in the boiling-hot sun while some hairy guy yells at you to work faster.” He stopped, his brush hovering for a minute like he was remembering something. “You know, he didn’t even pay me. He said me and my mom were costing him a ‘load of money,’ and I had to ‘earn my keep.’”

“Is he . . . at your house?” I asked. “I mean, you know, while your mom is in the rehab place?”

Tony laughed. “No, that guy is long gone.”

He carefully removed the shelves from the bookcase so he could paint behind them. I took them into the cool garage and got out my sandpaper. “Long gone,” I heard him say again, and then he whistled, a low, descending note, like the sound when you lose all your lives in an arcade game.

The primer stuck better if you roughed up the wood first with sandpaper. I went over all the surfaces a few times, watching the little pile of dust accumulate. Out in the driveway, the sun beat down on Tony. I saw him catch a white drip off a corner of the bookcase with his brush. He wiped the bristles across the top of the can.

He’d taken off his troublemaking T-shirt, and I could see the tan lines on his arms. He had the same shape as my dad, though skinnier, too skinny. Dad said he hadn’t been eating all that well at home, but he was sure eating here. Two servings at dinner, sometimes three, so maybe he’d fatten up a little bit.

“Why don’t we move that into the garage, where it’s cooler?”

“I’m almost done,” he answered, “then we can eat lunch.”

Oh yeah, lunch. I’d forgotten about that. I suddenly had a great idea. “I’ll make us a picnic!” I said.

I wiped the sawdust off the shelves and primed them. It didn’t take long. Primer didn’t have to be perfect. When I finished, I went into the house to gather some food and a blanket, and when I came back out, Tony was washing up at the spigot.

While I spread the blanket in the shade, he ran in to put on a different shirt, a plain orange polo. I set out some apples and pears and PB&Js, plus the good, really chocolatey granola bars that my mom thought she was hiding in the upper cabinet. Tony sat down, and we ate, staring at the bookcase.

“Well,” I said, biting into an apple, “there’s nothing as exciting as this, is there? Watching paint dry, I mean.”

Tony swallowed a big bite of his sandwich. “It’s fine by me,” he said. “Sometimes it’s too much excitement you have to worry about.” He took a sip from his water bottle. “You want to know what I like about living here? It’s this, peace and quiet.”

I nodded, not totally sure what he meant. Excitement was always a pretty good thing in my book. Neither of us said much after that. We just ate and listened to the birds tweeting and the neighbor’s spaniel barking at the back door to be let in. A car cruised slowly by, and after ten minutes, another one. If Tony didn’t like too much excitement, he was in the right place.

“We can probably start the blue paint later,” I said. “If you want to keep helping, that is.” I looked down at the blanket, hoping he’d say yes.

“Yeah, sure,” he answered. “It’s not like I have anything else to do.” He stood up and brushed some crumbs off his jeans. Then he stretched his arms over his head, blocking out the sun for a second and sending stripes of shade across the blanket. “Here’s the thing, though. I’m helping you with this painting thing, so I need you to help me with something, in return.”

“What is it?” I asked. Homework? No, he was a year ahead of me, doing stuff I didn’t understand.

“Come to McDonald’s with me after school on Thursday,” he said.

“What?” That wasn’t exactly the excitement I was hoping for. “Why?”

“I’m meeting my mom there. McDonald’s. On Broad Street.”

“Your mom? But I thought she was—”

“Yeah, she is, but she gets to see me sometimes, as long as the social worker is there. They don’t want me to visit her at the rehab place, and she can’t leave it by herself.” Tony put his hands on his hips. “You know I don’t like the social worker.”

“I . . . know, but . . . I don’t know, Tony,” I said, shaking my head. It seemed like it would be really weird. “I don’t even know your mom at all.”

“You’ll be my moral support,” he said.

I didn’t say anything.

“Come on, please?” He gave me a big smile. “I’ll buy you a shake and some fries.”

I was leaning toward going anyway. I’d been craving fast food since last weekend. Plus, I had seen Tony talking to Rachel recently by her locker. I didn’t even know they knew each other, but maybe he was trying to help me out with the whole Rachel situation. If that was the case, I owed him another one.

But then I remembered something.

“This girl at school told me someone overdosed at that McDonald’s.”

“Yeah? So?” Tony replied. “People OD all over the friggin’ place.”

Do they? I plucked some dandelions within reach of the blanket, started braiding their stems. “Has your mom ever overdosed?” I asked quietly.

Tony looked away from me, and then said, real low, “Twice. That I know of.”

He sighed. “She’d been on these pain pills after her