BooksBarbecue
Back The Cloud Chamber Save as PDF
Chapters (35)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Acknowledgments
  5. Author’s Note
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. Six
  12. Seven
  13. Eight
  14. Nine
  15. Ten
  16. Eleven
  17. Twelve
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. Sixteen
  22. Seventeen
  23. Eighteen
  24. Nineteen
  25. Twenty
  26. Twenty-One
  27. Twenty-Two
  28. Twenty-Three
  29. Twenty-Four
  30. Twenty-Five
  31. Twenty-Six
  32. Twenty-Seven
  33. Twenty-Eight
  34. Twenty-Nine
  35. Thirty

No school day had ever felt as long as this one, but finally it was over. At his locker Nate put on his jacket as quickly as he could and hurried out of the building, his book bag slung hastily over one shoulder. He kept his eyes on the ground, so it was only when he heard the familiar voice call out in surprise that he looked up. He and Larry had collided.

“Sorry,” Nate told him, looking down again.

Larry started to walk away. Nate drew his breath in and ran after him. He could feel his heart pounding.

“Lar, you gotta tell me what’s going on.”

Larry shifted his book bag. His baseball glove was sticking out of the top.

“I feel real bad about your dad, Nate. I know it’s not your fault, what happened. But my parents told me I shouldn’t hang around you anymore. There’s talk about your family. You know how it is.”

Nate thought about the Kowalskis. All the years he and Larry had been best friends. Friday nights when he’d slept over and they’d played darts with Mr. Kowalski in the basement game room. Mrs. Kowalski ruffling Nate’s hair and saying, every single time he came over, how much he’d grown. The two of them lying in Larry’s bunk beds, talking about how they’d hitchhike to Yellowstone National Park and—more recently—discussing which girls in class they thought were the coolest and whether Pauline Calhoun was as pretty as the girl on The Mod Squad and what it might be like to kiss her.

Nate looked at Larry hard. “Too bad for you,” he said, and the tough, bitter sound of his voice surprised him. “I had the best idea in the world for the science fair project we were going to do.”

“I know, this sucks,” Larry said. He looked like he just wanted to get out of there.

“Or you do,” said Nate, and walked off to the bus, alone.

Six

LAST SUMMER AFTER THE HAILSTORM, WITH THEIR battered hay lying flat in the field, Nate’s mother had got on the phone with the hay brokers, looking for a buyer. “It’s damaged crop,” Poppa had reminded Nate’s dad—like they didn’t know. “You’ll be lucky to get twenty-five cents on the dollar.”

They hayed a week later, trying to salvage what they could, as the tall, golden stalks of the Landry ranch, due east, blew in the breeze and, later, as tractors on neighboring ranches made their tidy runs, in what ranchers in the county called their best season in years. Finally, after weeks of calling around long-distance, his mother found a stable owner outside of Seattle who was willing to purchase the hay. Twenty cents on the dollar, but it was better than nothing. Sam Carter was demanding payment on their loan.