Julia Watts - Finding H.F. by Julia Watts

Author:Julia Watts
Language: es
Format: mobi
Publisher: Bella Books
Published: 2011-08-19T18:20:03+00:00

Chapter Twelve

“We must be gettin’ close to Atlanta,” Bo says, hunched over the steering wheel. “This traffic’s about to give me a heart attack.”

I look at the cars crammed in close to us, listen to the honking horns. “You can’t die on me now, Bo. I ain’t got nothin’ but a learner’s permit. Of course, they do say you can drive with a permit if you’ve got a licensed driver in the car. I wonder if it matters if the driver is dead or ali—”

What I see makes my mouth drop open. I’ve always heard about big cities with skylines, but hearing’s one thing, seeing’s another. The tallest building in Morgan has four stories. The buildings in front of us look too tall to be buildings. They look taller than the mountains back home. “Can you imagine bein’ on the top floor of one of them?” I say finally.

“Lord,” Bo says, “I’d be scared to death. What if the buildin’ caught fire? It’d be like that old movie with O.J. Simpson in it...what was that called? The Towering Furnace?”

“Shoot, I’d love to go up in one of them.” I point to one building that’s got a pointy top to it. “Don’t it look like King Kong ought to be up on that one?”

“It’s somethin’, all right. Hey, you want me to take this exit so we can see the buildin’s better?”

“Sure.”

We drive between the buildings and just about break our necks looking up at them. I know we look like hicks for gawking, and for a second I think we ought to try to appear more sophisticated, but that’s hard when you’re riding around in a broke-down Ford Escort with Morgan County, Kentucky, license plates.

Pretty soon I stop looking at the buildings and start looking at the people on the street: men and women in suits half running down the sidewalk like they’re in a hurry to get someplace important; skateboarding kids about my age with hair dyed the color of the flowers in Memaw’s yard, wearing baggy shorts that hang so low their drawers is showing; a man in a dirty stocking cap pacing back and forth and hollering like he’s arguing with himself. White people, black people, Chinese-looking people, tan-colored people who could be Mexicans or Arabs or something.

It’s not like Morgan, where all you see is white faces, and not only do you know those faces, but you know their daddy’s and granddaddy’s faces too.

It’s only when I look over at Bo and see how tense his body is that I notice the traffic again. A clock on a bank says 5:15, and I think of a phrase I’ve only heard on TV: rush hour. “You doin’ all right, Bo?” I feel selfish. Here I’ve been, relaxing and enjoying the sights, just like I was riding in a limousine, never giving a thought to the chauffeur.

“Um...I’d be a whole lot better if I could get out of this traffic for a while. I wonder if there’s someplace we could stop.

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