Away Running by David Wright

Author:David Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: JUV032030, JUV039120, JUV039180
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Published: 2016-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

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Matt looked all stunned when Moose called him white, even more than he had when Moose and them got shut out of the Pizza Pie Factory. Nobody was really talking anymore. There was a McDonald’s a few doors up the way, so I said, “Royals with cheese, anyone?”

Sidi fired up his doobie, like he didn’t care who was watching. “I gotta finish my smoke.”

The rest of us went on in. Except Matt. He sat with Sidi on a green wooden bench.

McDonald’s restaurants in Paris are swankier than back home, more McBistro than McSupersize Me. Moose, Claude, Yasmina and me stood in line; Aïda went off to the bathroom. A ten-foot plastic Ronald looked down at us, his face a lot warmer than those of the two security guards standing by the cash registers. An Arab and a Brother, like at the Pizza Pie. They eyeballed us the whole time we were ordering. We took our grub to a bank of tables off to the side and sat next to three girls eating strawberry sundaes. Hotties. Brunettes, very French.

Through the glass, I watched Sidi extend the doobie toward Matt. Matt shook his head but said something to him; he looked like Moose does when he’s jawing at me about something I already know. Sidi didn’t respond, kind of ignoring him, looking off down the avenue. Then he hit the doobie hard and flicked away the roach. He got up and came inside. Matt followed. The security guards hawked them as they walked to where we were sitting.

Matt could be naïve, it was true. Like outside the Pizza Pie. Or with the riot cops up in Villeneuve. He couldn’t see that the cops weren’t interested in him, only in me and Moose, that they were leaving him be.

But he made a good point too—like right then. It wasn’t Sidi being North African, having the wrong zip code and whatnot, that had caught the attention of those two guards. It was that he was camped outside their glass doors smoking a doobie, straight up out in the open, for everyone to see.

Come on now. For real? How were they not going to be sizing him up?

Sidi sat next to Aïda, closest to the French girls.

“Want something?” Matt asked him.

Sidi pulled some coins out of his jeans pocket, tossed them onto the tabletop. “Bring me a strawberry sundae,” he said, kind of dismissive, and Matt moved off.

Sidi smiled a sleazy smile at the French girls. “They really do look good.” He was eyeballing the girls and not their ice cream. “Are they as good as they look?”

The girls ignored him, Aïda slugged his arm, but he still leered.

“Eh! I’m talking to you,” he said.

“No you’re not,” one of the girls shot back. “You’re slurring at us.”

I couldn’t tell who laughed first, the girls or me, but it was my arm that Aïda clutched. “Don’t get him started,” she whispered.

But it was too late. Sidi moved to a chair at the girls’ table. “You too

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