Read Sharks & Boys for Free Online Page B

bar.”
    Landon: “Yeah, I’ve noticed that your faith totally seems to be stifling your lifestyle.”
    Burr: “And my future.”
    Dale: “It would be awesome if you owned a bar. What would you name it?”
    Burr: “The Thirsty Manatee.”
    Dale: “I’d drink there.”
    Munny: “If you don’t want to be Mormon, why don’t you quit? Take your life into your own hands while you’re still young.”
    [Long pause.]
    Skate: “It’s our heritage. It’s who we are.”
    Landon: “Let’s not get too serious.”
    Wick: “I came for a party.”
    Dale: “Dude, the Thirsty Manatee? Have you ever seen a manatee?”
    Skate: “Yeah, I’ve ridden Jet Skis off the coast of Florida. They’re everywhere. Like aquatic deer.”
    Dale: “What the hell are aquatic deer?”
    sov: “He’s saying that they’re plentiful.”
    Munny: “Jet Skis maim lots of sea life, manatees in particular.”
    Dale: “You’ve confused me for somebody who cares about the ass of a manatee.”
    Munny: “You’re right.”
    Wick: “This doesn’t really feel like a party.”
    Landon: “Yeah, it’s like I’m watching National Geographic .”
    Skate: “Let’s drink.”
    Burr: “Bring it.”
    Landon: “Hold the fort. I’m going to grab a jacket.”
    Dale: “Grab mine too. Hey. Maybe we should start a fire.”
    Burr: “We don’t have a pit.”
    Dale: “Minor setback. We could make one. And there’s a ton of wood around this place.”
    Wick: “Why don’t we put on jackets and wait to burn down the world until tomorrow night.”
    Skate: “That works.”
    Wick is so sensible. It’s one of his best qualities. But he’s got a lot of good qualities. One of my favorites is that he’s completely tuned in to other people. Once, to cheer me up, he made an amazing picnic lunch for me in Leddy Park. I’d just gotten a terrible grade on an English paper about Animal Farm . I tried to locate redeeming qualities in Squealer. Wick used a pig-shaped cookie cutter to mold a variety of cheeses into all the swine characters from the book. I ate those symbolic pigs and laughed harder than I’d ever laughed with another person.
    I lean back against the house and try to will my head not to ache. At the rate things are going, it could take hours before Wick does anything incriminating.
    “Man, look at the moon,” Skate says. “It looks just like a lemon wedge. I feel like I should write a poem about that moon.”
    Based on the e-zine, I’m not sure if Skate has poet potential. Is he sincere enough? Can he make his rhymes less lazy? Stop. Why am I being so mean? This is one of the last times I’ll be around him before he goes to college. Maybe my mother is right. Maybe I’m pushing him and Burr away. We don’t talk at all anymore. And we stopped talking way before the e-zine incident. I didn’t know how to handle things. I’d never lost anybody before. I was worried I’d say the wrong thing.
    “Write a poem about this moon,” Dale says.
    I hear the sound of a zipper followed by the clink of a belt buckle hitting the pavement. Laughter erupts. I don’t need to see what’s happening. Wick’s brother is notorious for mooning people, places, and things. Once, after pressing his pasty cheeks against the emergency exit window on the way home from school—as we passed an outdoor church brunch for widows—Dale was permanently banned from the school bus.
    I begin to pluck at the grass. I keep expecting to hear Simone’s dumb giggle float around the corner. But it truly seems to be a gathering of just guys. I’m ashamed. I didn’t do anything interesting; I just did something incredibly stupid. I guess it’s a fine line between the two. How will I explain things to my mother? What excuse can I possibly come up with for abandoning her and putting more than a thousand extra miles on her new car? I guess I can claim an illness. Like I thought my appendix was bursting, and I wanted to get to a really good hospital that specialized in that sort of