Looking for Red by Angela Johnson

Author:Angela Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published: 2002-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

15

Mark says when he was in the hospital he had a dream.

He and Red were climbing up a mountain in the rain. Mark wanted to stop and wait out the storm, but Red thought that they should keep climbing because the weather would get worse before it got better.

Mark finally stopped.

Red went on.

Mark is humming a song that I’ve been humming for the past week, and it’s only this morning that I got it out of my head.

I sit next to him and Mona while we swing our feet off the bridge, throwing pebbles that we picked up from beside the road down into the water. And even though we are way above the water, I can see the ripple as the pebbles drop into the current below.

“Damn, that’s a long drop,” Mark says.

Mona blows a bubble and scratches the daisy tattoo on her ankle. Red and her got their tattoos together. He got one on his arm—poison ivy. I wanted one, and Cassie said that if I still wanted one in a couple of years, I could go to it. She hoped I’d get bored with the idea, but I didn’t and sneaked off a few days later and got a dove on my stomach.

Cassie still doesn’t know about it.

“Yeah, it’s making me sick,” Mona says.

“I like it,” I say.

Mona and Mark look at me, then at each other. But they move closer to me when I lean my head over the rails.

Mona says she had a dream last week.

She was standing on the side of a mountain, and as Red reached the top she pulled him the rest of the way to his feet. Red wanted to get out of the storm, but Mona thought the rain felt good against her face, so she told him to go on.

I think about our dreams.

I think about how it would be so easy to sink underneath the railing and dive into the cool water.

Mark says, “It would kill you instantly.”

“You’d be gone before you hit the water, girlfriend,” Mona says.

“I know I could do it. I wouldn’t even get bruised.”

“Don’t ever,” Mona says.

Mark just looks at me real sad and shakes his head.

“It wouldn’t be so bad. I’ve always wanted to high-dive.”

“Well, you can just forget about it, Mike. It’s crazy to want to jump from this height,” Mark says.

“Just like it’s crazy to crash your car into Nemo’s, huh?” I say.

Mark looks out into the ocean and starts humming again. “You know why I did it.”

“I don’t,” I say, ’cause he’s made me mad and he’s treating me like a baby.

“You know, Mike. Don’t say you don’t.”

Mark has tears in his eyes and I’m sorry all of a sudden. Mona looks at me out of the corner of her eye and shakes her head. She leans past me and holds on to Mark’s arm.

It doesn’t make sense, but I feel jealous, for Red. Mona and Mark shouldn’t ever care about each other, because Red is who brought them together.

But Red had left us all.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.