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)
She handed me a Sharpie to sign it and rolled her eyes while we sat at the kitchen table. Her mom was putting Benji down for a nap, and her dad was still at work. “Because I broke my arm?”
I signed her cast. The first signature. “No. Because your dad said I can’t ever kiss you again, and what’s the point of being your boyfriend if I can’t kiss you?”
She snorted. “You’re not seriously listening to my dad.”
“I am. I am very seriously listening to your dad.” I capped the marker and handed it back to her. “He’s going to talk to my dad about teaching me to use a rifle.”
“Your mom is never going to let you use a gun. She hates guns.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
Josie eyes me. “Um … yeah, she does.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because of Columbine. She still talks to my mom about it. And I overheard her saying to my mom that she hates guns. She used those exact words.”
“Your dad is the chief of police. I think she’ll let him teach me.”
“She won’t.” Josie shrugged like her two words ended our discussion.
“I’m still asking her.”
“Go ahead.” She hopped off the stool and grabbed the Tupperware container of cookies, hugging it to her while peeling off the lid with her good hand before offering me one.
“I could have opened that for you.”
“I’m not helpless.” She wasn’t. Never had been, never would be.
“If I broke my arm, I’d let you do everything for me. Do my homework. Feed me. Tie my shoes. Carry my schoolbag …”
Josie’s pouty lips turned downward. I responded with a huge, chocolate-chip-cookie grin. I had no shame in my game.
“My grandma said she’d rather die than have people take care of her. She’s really smart, and she thinks I’m just like her.” Josie twisted her lips. “It’s weird to think that death is better than letting someone help you. But if I am like her, then maybe someday I’ll choose death over someone feeling sorry for me and doing stuff for me. My other grandma got sick, and she has to wear adult diapers. My grandpa helps her change them. It’s really nice of him, but still … I bet she feels embarrassed.”
“He’s her husband. That’s probably what a good husband should do. My dad wouldn’t do it for my mom, but we both know he’s an asshole.”
“Colten, don’t say that.”
“I’m going to be a better husband than him.”
“You’d change your wife’s adult diaper?”
My nose wrinkled. I couldn’t imagine that. I had never changed a diaper before. “I mean … maybe. If I loved her.”
“Don’t marry her if you don’t love her.” Josie rolled her eyes and laughed.
I grabbed a second cookie. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah. I know. I hope I don’t need anyone’s help. I want to be like my other grandma. After my grandpa died, she did everything. Mowed the lawn. Fixed a leaky toilet. She’s pretty awesome.”
Sometimes I wanted to be Josie. She had a great family and so much confidence.
Me?
I had an asshole dad. A stupid brother. And a mother who loved me, but she was emotionally whacked out because of my dad.
“I promised my parents I would never ask you this, but …” I eased into a question I’d been meaning to ask her for a long time but never got the nerve.
“Ask me what?”
She set the lid on the container of cookies, and I pressed it down before she had the chance to not ask me.
“Did your mom cheat on your dad?”
“What?” Her head whipped backward.
“Not recently. I mean years ago. You said your mom had sex with another guy, and that’s why your skin color is a little darker. Did she cheat on him?”
“No.” Her face wrinkles.
“Then why do you have a different dad?”
She stares at her cookie for several seconds. “I don’t. My dad is my dad. He’s not my biological dad, but he’s real.”
“Is that what your parents told you?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t ask any more questions?”
“Of course I did, but they said it wasn’t important until I get older.”
“That’s weird. How old?”
“They said when I’m an adult it will make sense.”
I had a million questions. My biggest question was how she could be fine with them not telling her the truth until she was an adult. I hated when my parents lied to me. Josie, however, wasn’t like me or anyone else for that matter. One minute she was too curious for her own good, on the verge of getting in trouble, and the next minute, she seemed to not care about something as interesting, and maybe a little crazy, like the fact that the chief wasn’t her real—biological—dad, yet her mom supposedly didn’t have an affair.
Josephine Watts processed everything in life a little differently than other kids—and maybe most other humans.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Josie …” My mom’s eyebrows jump up her forehead after she unlocks and opens her front door. Her gaze shifts to the small suitcase at my side. “What are you doing here?” She steps aside to let me into the entry.