Read Burning Blue for Free Online Page B

Bar. A better choice: a big box wholesale club, restock department.
    “You don’t need a license to drive a forklift?”
    “The dude who’s supposed to work the forks is always out sick. After a while I got tired of putting my life at risk to climb the racks to the fourth tier to pull down eight-packs of Similac for stroller mafia who don’t know the words
thank you
.” I stopped myself before I told her that whenever I worked the forklift, I always made sure I took my meds, usually.
    “Costco?” she said.
    “BJ’s.”
    “Cool.”
    “Not really. How come you can’t drive?” I said.
    “Car’s in the shop.”
    “Gotcha.” I’d found myself hoping she had some kind of condition too. Not like she didn’t have enough going on with her face. I’m an idiot.
    She checked her phone for the time. “Yeah, I think I’m going to have to hoof it.” She stepped out into the rain, east. “Good luck with the stroller mafia.”
    “You too,” I said.
    She turned back and looked at me like,
Wha?
    I wondered why, having been stranded by Dave, she didn’t just call somebody else to pick her up. That’s when it occurred to me that maybe she didn’t have anybody to call. That maybe everybody thinks the pretty girl with the big brain has the world by the tail, that she wouldn’t want to hang out with somebody average like you, so why bother trying to be friends with her. Or was it that she just didn’t want to be around the people from her old life, their pity?
    She walked fast up the avenue. Her backpack straps were uneven. She didn’t have an umbrella. I pulled a busted one from the trash and splinted the broken spoke with a rolled magazine and a plastic bag ripped into strips. It held together perfectly for thirty seconds, the amount of time I needed to catch up to Nicole, and then it punked right in front of her. The one side of it was still okay. I handed her the umbrella. A truck flew through a pothole lake and threw a wave of muddy water onto us.
    Nicole dropped to her knees in a silent scream. She covered her face as if to protect herself from a second splash. She was balled up on the side of the road. The gutter water tugged at the half umbrella. “It burns,” she said. “Oh god. Please. It burns.” I helped her up. She wouldn’t let go of my arm. “Walk me? Please?”
    The bandage tape was peeling off her cheek. She tilted her head so I couldn’t see it. I’d always thought she was statuesque goddess height, at least five ten, but she was more like five five. In my mind she was all curves, but here, now, up close, my hands on her waist to hold her up, she was slight. She was just a girl, and she was shivering.

“As in rhymes with S
bar
ro?”
    “Ex
act
ly, as in, exactly.”
    I found it hard to believe she didn’t know my last name after I was the YouTube sensation of freshman year, spazzing out in the middle of the gym floor at the pep rally. Could she not have seen the video? Maybe she wasn’t at the pep rally altogether?
    “Nazzaro,” she said. “I think I knew that. Wait, I’ve seen that name somewhere. Somewhere else, I mean.”
    “My father, maybe. It’s a lame paper, but you ever read the
Clarion
? He’s the art critic.”
    “Your father is Vincent Nazzaro?”
    “Steven, but everybody always thinks his name is Vincent too. Not like I mean he has two names.”
    “I know what you mean.”
    “Thanks.”
    “For what?”
    I shrugged.
    She stumbled. I grabbed her arm. She regained her balance but kept her arm hooked through mine as we walked. “Was it as lame for you as it is for me, home school?” she said.
    “My father just let me read whatever I wanted, as long as I passed those tests the state makes you take.”
    “I have to take them if I don’t head back next quarter. How were they?”
    “I took them all in the beginning of the year to get them over with. I home schooled online. This pilot program thing.”
    “And you passed everything, no tutors?” she said.
    “Tests