Fighting Words by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Author:Kimberly Brubaker Bradley [Bradley, Kimberly Brubaker]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2020-08-11T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

■ ■ ■

It was a Thursday night. That mattered. Clifton drove away in his truck on Monday mornings, before I even left for school, and he never, but never, got back before Friday afternoon. Sometimes it was even later—sometimes, if the weather was bad or there were accidents on the highway or something, it might even be Saturday, but it was never Thursday. Thursday nights were good nights.

Teena and some of Suki’s other friends wanted Suki to go to a movie with them. You can’t walk to the movie theater from where we lived—you really couldn’t walk to anywhere—but Teena had borrowed her mom’s car and there was some movie they all wanted to see, some superhero thing.

Suki said, “We gotta take Della.”

Teena said, “We don’t have room in the car, Suki. Not with all of us going. What’s she going to do, ride in the trunk?”

I’d done that once, but I’d been smaller then. It hadn’t been as much fun as I thought it would be.

“Plus,” said Teena, “the movie’s rated R. No way they’re going to let Della in.”

“Plus I don’t want to go,” I said. I thought it sounded stupid.

“It’s Thursday,” Teena said.

“Right,” said Suki. Even then she was undecided. She dug around in her purse and in my backpack and in the couch cushions for the change that fell out of Clifton’s pockets sometimes, and then she went over to the washing machine and looked through the stuff she’d pulled from Clifton’s pockets before she did the laundry that week, and there was a twenty-dollar bill, so she had money enough for the show.

“Go,” I said. “I don’t mind.” I didn’t. It was late August, a clear night, and nice and warm. I could sit on the back step till the mosquitoes came out at dusk, and I had something to snack on and I just really didn’t mind. Suki usually left me by myself when she had something she had to do. Sometimes I liked being alone.

Teena said, “My mom’ll be around if she needs anything.”

Suki gave me a kiss. She promised, “I’ll be home by nine.”

Clifton came home at 8:30.

I was wearing my purple shortie pajamas.

It was a Thursday. I never did find out why he came home on a Thursday.

Clifton banged the front door. He looked at me in a way that made me jump to my feet, though I couldn’t have said why. “I’m just going to bed,” I said.

“Where’s your sister?”

“Sleeping.”

He’d never touched me once before. I’d still never trusted him. Right then, in that instant, I knew not to trust him at all. The hairs rose up on my neck and stayed that way, like spines.

He said, “She’s not here, is she?”

He smiled the way he did when he was just about to say something mean.

I looked at the clock. It was only 8:30. Thirty minutes until Suki came home. I listened for Teena’s mom’s car, but couldn’t hear anything. My stomach hurt.

“You owe me,” Clifton said. “That’s what I tell your sister.

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