The Education of Hailey Kendrick by Eileen Cook

Author:Eileen Cook
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Social Issues, Humorous Stories, Family & Relationships, Juvenile Fiction, Fiction, Self-perception, Love & Romance, Dating (Social customs), Boarding schools, Schools, Friendship, Dating & Sex
ISBN: 9781442413252
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2011-01-04T07:31:05.151950+00:00

18

I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. I’d never snuck off campus before. I guess I thought Drew might race the truck toward the gates while the security team released savage German shepherds and shot up the back window in a blaze of gunfire. Drew had me sit on the passenger-side floor, and he tossed his coat over the top of my head. He eased up to the security gate at the front of campus and casually chatted with the guard—someone named Earl—for a few minutes about football, before we pulled away. There were no alarms, no searchlights, no police barricades. The whole thing was almost anticlimactic.

“You can sit up now,” Drew said.

I pulled myself up and clicked the seat belt. The vinyl seats of the truck were patched here and there with duct tape. The truck was old. It had a tape deck. My legs were bare and covered with goose bumps. I pulled my socks up to cover as much real estate as possible.

Drew slammed his hand against the dashboard. “Sorry. The heater is kind of dodgy.” He slammed his hand again, and then a rush of hot air whooshed out of the vent. “Are you freezing? There’s a sweatshirt in the back somewhere.”

Without looking he hooked his arm over the back of the seat and started fishing around in the pile of junk that was in the back of the cab. There seemed to be an array of books, sporting gear, and clothing. Like a magician with a rabbit, he yanked a sweatshirt out of the middle of the pile. There was a Boston Bruins logo across the front. He handed it to me. I held it pinched between two fingers.

“It’s clean,” Drew said, looking over at me with a smile. “At least, there’s no Ebola on it or anything.”

“Of course. I wasn’t thinking that.” I gave it a quick sniff test. It didn’t smell funny. In fact it smelled nice, like pine trees. I pulled it on over my sweater. I pulled the length of it over my knees. “Where are we going?”

“Your first skip day.” Drew shook his head as if he were overcome by the enormity of it all. “We have to do something good. You can’t waste something like that. We’ll get some breakfast at Denny’s and come up with a plan.”

“Who’s Denny?”

Drew laughed. “You’re joking, right? Denny’s? As in Denny’s restaurant?”

“Oh, right. Of course.”

Drew stopped the truck in the middle of the road. “You’ve never been to a Denny’s, have you?”

“I have been to a Denny’s. My family stopped at one once when we were driving to New York.”

“You didn’t eat there, did you? You went there for the bathroom.”

“Don’t make a federal case out of it.” I pulled my hands up into the sleeves of the sweatshirt.

“Where does your family go for breakfast?”

“Will you just drive? God. We go out. We just don’t go to Denny’s. There are other places to eat, you know.”

Drew put the truck back into drive, and we headed toward town.

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.