The Baseball Great Collection by Tim Green

Author:Tim Green
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

CHAPTER THIRTY

THE BELL ON THE door to the ice-cream shop jingled. Josh turned around and groaned when he saw who it was. Jaden had her arm hooked through Mickey Jr.’s arm, both of them eating ice-cream cones. She leaned over and licked Mickey Jr.’s mint chocolate chip cone and they laughed together. Her eyes went right past Josh.

Josh reached out and touched her arm as she walked by.

“Jaden,” he said. “Can I talk to you?”

“Oh, hi, Josh,” she said, acting as if she hadn’t seen him. “Sure. What’s up?”

“Alone?” Josh said, nodding at Mickey.

“I think that whatever you have to say, you can say in front of Mickey,” Jaden said.

“Dude, you are so lame,” Benji said to her. “After everything we’ve done for you, this is how you act?”

“Let’s see,” Jaden said, glaring at Benji. “What have you done for me, Lido? You’ve teased me. You’ve insulted me. You’ve embarrassed me. Umm…”

“Josh needs to talk to you,” Benji said. “That should be enough.”

“You guys go ahead,” Mickey said, holding up his cell phone. “I need to make a call anyway. I’ll wait for you on that bench around the corner, Jaden.”

“Mickey,” Jaden said, “you don’t have to—”

“No, that’s okay,” Mickey said. He gave her hand a pat and unhooked his arm. They watched him round the corner, eating chocolate sprinkles off his mint chocolate chip.

“Josh, loan me a five, will you?” Benji said. “I need a double-decker before we hit Doubleday Field. You want something too? I might need ten.”

Josh fished ten dollars out of his pocket and handed it to Benji. He asked for three scoops of chocolate on a cone, the watched Benji disappear into the shop with a jingle of the bells.

“Can we walk?” Josh asked.

“Not far,” she said, nodding toward where Mickey had gone. “I don’t want to be rude.”

“Jaden,” Josh said. “I feel like all of a sudden we’re not friends anymore and I don’t even know exactly why.”

“But you know partially why, right?” she said, licking her cone as they took slow steps down the shady side of the street.

“You act like you’ve known Mickey for years,” Josh said. “You just met the guy. You have no idea what he’s about.”

“I have instincts,” she said.

“Well, instinct this,” Josh said, and he told her the story of what he’d seen, trying to read her face as she listened but coming up with nothing. Finally he finished.

“And you went in there even though it said ‘No trespassing’?” Jaden asked.

“I had to follow the guy,” Josh said.

“So you saw an old house and a guy who yelled at you after you almost made him crack up his truck? How does that equate to cheating?” she said, throwing her hands up and turning to go. “Hopefully for you, Josh, you won’t get in trouble for trespassing.”

“Jaden, hey, wait,” Josh said, hurrying to catch up and seeing Lido step out of the ice-cream store and head their way with two cones, licking them alternately. “You can’t tell me you didn’t see what I saw in that game?”

She spun on him, her face pinched and red.

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