Bleeding Kansas by Sara Paretsky Page B

It was easier to agree with her than to offer excuses.
    â€œThose Jews are coming from Kansas City this afternoon to look at the calf,” Arnie announced. “Make sure you’re not playing that music of yours while they’re here. We need them to give us a favorable answer, and that guitar churning up the air isn’t going to put them in a good frame of mind any more than it does me. And don’t wipe your mouth on the back of your hand. What do you think that piece of paper is next to you? A copy of the Ten Commandments?”
    Junior snickered. Robbie gulped down his eggs and raced upstairs to shower. He couldn’t stand to go to school with milk on him. It had happened earlier this year, when he started in ninth grade, in town, and the memory of the girls mooing in the hall as he passed still made his ears burn. Lara Grellier had been in the group. He suspected it was she who told the others. They were city girls, who wouldn’t know how fresh milk smelled, just that Robbie smelled funny.
    He stood under the shower until the hot water ran out, then rubbed a clear space on the mirror to inspect his upper lip. Junior had only started shaving last year, when he turned seventeen, but Robbie was hoping that dark-haired musicians grew mustaches faster than blond football players.
    â€œI won’t wait all day for you, Romeo!” Junior bellowed, rattling the bathroom doorknob.
    Robbie sprayed himself with the bottle of aftershave he’d started keeping in his backpack after Junior filled a previous one with ammonia. He pulled on his black BECOMING THE ARCHETYPE T-shirt. They were his favorite Christian metal group, the one he modeled his own sound on. He’d stenciled JESUS ROCKS on the back. Nanny hated the message, hated the shirt, and she’d ruined his first one in the laundry by deliberately pouring bleach on it. It was another thing he kept in his school backpack, folded flat inside his social studies notebook.
    Robbie ran back down the stairs, his backpack draped over his shoulder. More than once, Junior had gone to school without him and he’d had to hitch a ride. Robbie had been lucky one time back in September, getting to the crossroads just as Chip and Lara Grellier were pulling out of their yard. Chip was going to drive on around him, but Robbie jumped in front of the car, waving his arms frantically, and explained that Junior had left him behind.
    He’d scrunched into the back of Chip’s Nissan, his knees around his ears, his nose almost resting in Lara Grellier’s soft brown curls. Her hair smelled like fresh grass, and he could see the line where her tan ended beneath her tank top. He felt himself contract with longing. Was this love? And could he be in love with Lara Grellier, who had broken his front tooth in a fight when they were in sixth grade, whose family always went out of their way to hurt the Schapens? Besides which, she went to a church where they believed in evolution instead of the Bible, so according to Myra, Arnie, and Pastor Nabo she was bound for hell. Maybe it was his—Robbie’s—job to save her.
    When they got to school and she jumped out, he’d been imagining her breasts under his hands as his passion guided her to Jesus. Her mocking “End of the trail, milkboy” made him blush, as if she had seen his thoughts.
    The next several times that Junior left without him, Robbie had sprinted to the crossroads, hoping to get there ahead of the Grelliers, but each time they had already left for town and he’d been forced to walk the long mile to the main road before getting a lift.
    After that he’d tried harder to be ready ahead of Junior, since Myra thought it was good discipline for Robbie when Junior left without him. “This is what it will feel like when Jesus comes again in glory, to be left behind with the sinners. So you learn to be ready, ready for school, ready for the Lord.”
    When it was his turn for