Summer is coming on, though, and I’ve got to have someone to hang around with. This is the last Saturday before Memorial Day. Getting time for beaches and stuff. I suppose Nick and I might get together again, but not if he’s going to be nuts about girls all the time.
A guy stops in front of the stoop, and Cat half opens his eyes in the sun and squints at him. The guy says, “You Dave Mitchell?”
“Huh? Yeah.” I look up, surprised. I don’t exactly recognize the guy, never having seen him in a clear light before. But from the voice I know it’s Tom.
“Oh, hi!” I say. “Here’s Cat. He’s pretty handsome in daylight.”
“Yeah, he looks all right, but what happened to you?”
“Me and a friend of mine got in a fight.”
“Um, that’s bad.” Tom sits down and has sense enough to see there isn’t anymore to say on that subject. “I start work Memorial Day, when the beaches open. Working in a filling station on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn.”
“Gee, that’s a long way off. You going to live over there?”
“Yeah, they’re going to get me a room in a Y in Brooklyn.” Tom stretches restlessly and goes on: “I suppose you get sick of school and all, but it’s rotten having nothing to do. I’d be ready to go nuts if I didn’t get a job. I can’t wait to start.”
I think of asking him doesn’t he have a home or something to go back to, but somehow I don’t like to.
“Like today,” Tom says. “I’d like to go somewhere. Do something. Got any ideas?”
“Um. I was sort of trying to think up something myself. Movies?”
Tom shakes himself. “No. I want to walk, or run, or throw something.”
“There’s a big park—sort of a woods—up near the Bronx. A kid told me about it. He said he found an Indian arrowhead there, but I bet he didn’t. Inwood Park, it’s called.”
“Let’s go!” Tom stands up and wriggles his shoulders like he’s Superman ready to take off.
“O.K. Wait a minute. I’ll go tell Mom. Should I get some sandwiches?”
Tom looks surprised. “Sure, fine, if she doesn’t mind.”
I’m not worried about getting Mom to make sandwiches because she always likes to fix a little food for me. The thing is, ever since my fight with Nick, she’s been clucking around me like the mother hen. Maybe she figures I got in some gang fight, so she keeps asking me where I’m going and who with. Also, I guess she noticed I don’t go to Nick’s after school anymore. I come right home. So she asks me do I feel all right. You can’t win. Right now, I can see she’s going to begin asking who is Tom and where did I meet him. It occurs to me there’s an easy way to take care of this.