Read When Dad Came Back for Free Online

weary, even on a hot day.
    No mistake about it. These were hard times.
    There had been times when Gabe had found money in the street—dimes and nickels, and an occasional quarter embedded in asphalt, which he had to dig out with a Popsicle stick. He had found five dollars once and splurged on a Whopper, eating alone, greedily, as his eyes occasionally rose to peer out of the window. He was worried that a big man with a big belly might push open the Burger King door and roar, “Hey, anybody seen five dollars in the street?” and then snatch the burger right out of his hands!
    That was two years ago, and it had been the highlight of his found-money experience.
    Now, as he was walking down the street, trying to distance himself from the brother with the sombrero, Gabe had a nice bit of luck. On the sidewalk lay a dollar bill. Without a thought, he snatched up the dollar and looked around nervously. There was no one else around to claim that crisp, sun-dried greenback. He stuffed it into his pocket. He embarked on a two-mile trek back to his neighborhood, down one residential street after another. He noticed some houses were tidy and others so littered with junk on the lawn that they looked like crummy yard sales.
    It was midday. Swamp coolers in windows and on rooftops were churning as fast as they could. Kids lurked in trees or sat inside their houses, watching television. After a mile, with sweat pouring out of him, he stopped at a house where the sprinklers were going. One was broken, so that it was more like a bubbler. He got down and drank from it. It felt good to quench his thirst.
    â€œI'm like a dog.” He giggled as he got to his feet, his knees dimpled dark from the wet grass. He stood in the middle of the lawn with his arms outspread and let the sprinklers spray his body. Soaking wet, he hurried away when a woman came out onto the porch and propped her hands on her heavy hips. She looked none too happy to find a dripping boy standing on her lawn.
    But Gabe felt like something sweeter than water from a broken sprinkler head. Most sodas at 7-Eleven cost a dollar and some change, but Gabe often went to a liquor store where sixteen-ounce sodas cost only eighty-nine cents. Even with tax, he could exit the store with a cold soda and pennies in his pocket.
    As he approached the liquor store, his shirt and pants now dry, he was surprised by a horde of people milling in front. He hurried when he saw two television crews. A robbery? Blood spilled from a parking lot fight? Or maybe both!
    Gabe found out that the liquor store had sold a winning lotto ticket. At first, he heard a million dollars, but as he listened to the gossip in both English and Spanish, he learned that it was actually ten thousand dollars.
    The amount was disappointing, like a punctured swim toy slowly losing air. With a million dollars, he could live forever in an air-conditioned house. With ten thousand dollars, he might be able to buy a good secondhand car when he got his driver's license and have gas money for about three months.
    But still!
    The winners were the Ramirez family—the family of Linda Ramirez, whom he'd seen at City Hall! She had been nervously chewing her fingernail in the hallway as she waited in line to get a restraining order. Now she was smiling for the camera, her teeth white as Chiclets. Her mother had a chubby arm around Linda and her little brother.
    Gabe entered the liquor store. There was no one behind the cash register. Except for the fan at the counter, fluttering the pages of an open magazine, the place was quiet. Gabe headed to the refrigerated case and opened the glass doors. He let the cool air overwhelm him. He grabbed a soda from the back, where they were the coldest.
    But the sound of crinkling cellophane made him freeze and listen. The noise stopped, then started again. When Gabe tiptoed around the corner to the potato chip and candy aisle, he confronted a little kid. The kid was pushing Oreo cookies