Read Johnny Long Legs for Free Online Page B

thought about it a minute. “Used to,” he had said. He remembered the time. There were he and two other boys. The other
     boys had cigarettes and had dared him to smoke. And he did, just to win the dare. He had almost gagged from the smoke and
     the taste. He had smoked a couple of times after that but only in the presence of the two boys.
    They had thought it was smart. Grownup. If Mom had known he had smoked she would have skinned him alive. There wasDad to think about now, too. Neither one would want him to smoke.
    “No,” he said. “I don't know why I even picked it up. I thought I would put it in here.”
    He reached over and squashed the butt into the ashtray. Squashed it so that the paper got all torn and the tobacco fell out
     of it.

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    N ow come you asked Coach Smith to let me play again?” asked Jim. “After what I did to you and Toby.”
    “Forget it,” said Johnny.
    “I can't forget it. How come?”
    Johnny took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Well, I remembered how you looked at me after I was hit by the snowplow.
     And how you looked when Toby and I fell off our toboggan.”
    “How did I look?”
    “You looked scared to death.”
    “I was.”
    “Anyhow, I knew you were sorry. That's why I called up Coach Smith.”
    Jim slid back on his chair and stretched his legs out under the table. “I'm sorry I did all those crazy things to you,” confessed
     Jim. “And for making you spill the milk too. Guess it was all kind of stupid.”
    “Well, let's forget it,” said Johnny. “Let's not talk about it anymore.”
    They were silent awhile. There was no sound except the wind howling like a hungry animal outside.
    Finally Johnny broke the silence. “When is your father coming home?”
    Jim looked at the clock on the wall. “Anytime now.”
    He had said that before.
    “He really roots for you at the basketball games, doesn't he?” smiled Johnny.
    Jim laughed. “Yeah, I know. And I heardhim calling you `Long Legs' and `Leadfoot.' Before the game tonight I told him not to call you those names again. He forgot,
     I guess.” He rose from the chair. “Come on. I have some stuff in my room I'll show you.”
    Jim's bedroom walls were shabby too. Besides the bed there was a chair, a nightstand with a lamp on it, and two orange crates
     standing on end with books and magazines and a couple of cigar boxes in them.
    Jim took two cigar boxes out of a crate, put them on the bed, and opened them. Colored rocks and fossils practically filled
     each box.
    “I like collecting rocks and fossils too,” he said proudly.
    While looking at the collection Johnny began to smell a strange odor. He lifted a rock to his nose and sniffed at it. There
     was no smell.
    “Hey, look!” Jim exclaimed suddenly.
    Johnny looked at the base of the door where Jim was pointing. Smoke!
    He dropped the rock into the cigar box and started to run after Jim. Jim flung open the door, but a thick cloud of smoke drove
     them back into the room. Jim slammed the door shut.
    He stared, petrified. “It's our furnace pipes,” he said. “Pop kept saying he'd get new ones but he never did.”
    Johnny paled. “We'd better phone the fire department or this house will burn down to the ground.”
    “Can't,” said Jim. “Our phone was disconnected last week. We can't get out of here, anyway. There's too much smoke coming
     inside.”
    Johnny stared at the smoke seeping in underneath the door and curling into the room. The boys covered their eyes againstthe stinging fog. They coughed and backed against the farthest wall.
    “We have to get out of here!” yelled Johnny. “We'll burn to death if we don't!”
    “We'll have to jump out of the window!” cried Jim.
    “Jump that far? We'll break every bone in our bodies!”
    Nevertheless, he went to the window, the only one in the room. It was latched securely on top and at the two lower sides.
     He unlatched it at the top and tried to lift the window.
    It was stuck solid.

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    J im! Help