Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 70570 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70570 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
He squints at me. “You must think the whole world revolves around you, huh?”
“You’ve been doing a great job of making me feel like it does.” I cross my arms and stare back at him challengingly. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be up in my face talking about gross stuff.”
His all-too-familiar brand of frustration clouds his eyes as he seems to try formulating a comeback. He clicks his tongue, giving up. “Hammer isn’t here. Gonna check the garage again.” Then he pulls away from me and heads out through the side patio door.
I’m right on his tail, following him. “I think you had another reason for coming here.”
“Keep tellin’ yourself that.”
“Has nothing to do with a stupid hammer.”
“I did mention it’s my favorite hammer, didn’t I?” He rounds the back corner of the patio and arrives at the door leading into the back of the garage, which he lets himself into, then flicks on a light. I follow right behind. “Can’t go home without it.”
“I don’t believe you came all the way out here just for a tool.”
“It’s not that far. I live behind the church. It’s only one of two houses on the street with an actual front porch, which I cherish, and I left that front porch I cherish so much to come here and get my hammer back. No other reason.”
“That still seems far to me.”
“I’m used to the drive.”
I sigh. “Well, wherever it’s hiding, it’ll still be there tomorrow morning.”
“No. By tomorrow morning, Tanner’s kids—his football ones, not his real ones—will snatch up my hammer, hang it on the tree like an ornament, and I’ll never see the likes of it again.” He stops at a rack full of odds and ends. “I shouldn’t have left it here.”
“You’re so weird.”
He pauses, then half turns to me. “I don’t really skip showers, by the way. I’m … I’m actually pretty particular about taking them daily. Sometimes twice. I sweat a lot.”
“Okay.”
“Was only trying to get under your skin earlier. Just needed to say that. To, uh … clarify.” He hunts through the rack, then stops again. “Also, I … don’t really deal with as much animal poop as I made it seem earlier. I wear gloves, so I don’t get anything under my nails. It’s important, actually,” he adds with a serious look on his face. “Wearing proper protective gear and being sanitary.”
“I understand.”
“Really, it’s very important. Hygiene is important to me.” He clears his throat, then faces the rack again. “Despite how I … may have sounded a minute ago.”
“Only getting under my skin, annoying me, being a child, yes, I understand.”
“Good.” He stops. “Wait. You think I’m being a child?”
“I’ll look over here.” I leave his side to search elsewhere in the garage. I find a long workbench bearing many drawers and a wall of hanging tools. “What does it look like?”
“You think I’m being a child?” he asks again.
“There are, like, a trillion hammers on this wall.”
Samuel appears right at my side. Our shoulders touch. “For one, half of these are mallets. This one’s a ball peen. This one’s a framing hammer. Another mallet. Here’s … the world’s smallest sledgehammer, I guess. No idea what the hell this one is.” He looks at me. “I’m not being a child about anything.”
“Maybe if you would simply admit what you really came here looking for—”
“Malcolm …”
“Oh, using my whole name now?” I lift my eyebrows with mock surprise. “I must be in real trouble if you’re using my whole name.”
He stares at me for a while, appearing unable to say anything.
Considering all of his usual pestering and persistence, I find it disarming when Samuel goes silent.
I notice a bead of blood running down his hand. “Samuel!”
His eyes flash with alarm. “What?”
I take hold of his hand at once and look at it. “You nicked your thumb. When you were going through that box in the kitchen.”
“So? It’s nothing.” He frowns, looking at it closer. “I think.”
I eye him. “Mr. Hygiene. Mr. Sanitary. And you have a river of blood pouring out of your thumb, but no, ‘it’s nothing’.”
“It’s not ‘pouring’, first off, and secondly, I don’t appreciate my own words bein’ used against me like I’m a four-year-old.”
“You are a four-year-old.” I sigh, then grab hold of his wrist and pull him along. “Come with me.”
“Wait. Where are we—Hey! Stop tuggin’ on me!”
Despite his protests, I take him out of the big garage, into the main house, and up the stairs to my room. “Sit here,” I order him, placing him on the edge of the bed, “and hold your hand up, like this, so it doesn’t bleed everywhere.” He pouts at me as I leave to search for a first aid kit in the bathroom nearby. I find it under the sink and return to the bedroom, where Samuel has gotten up to examine his own wound in a tall stand-up mirror on the back of the closet door. “Sit,” I tell him again, pointing at the bed.