Gypsy Davey
Page 11
Davey ran his gangly run after the car until he couldn’t see it anymore, and for ten minutes after.
LIKE HELL TO PIECES
When I went back and got my bike there were two good things two lucky things which was how I knew everything was going to be okay. The first lucky thing was that after all that time my bike was still there lying in the street the second lucky thing was that there was a rainbow which is supposed to mean that lucky stuff is gonna go your way isn’t that what that means? Even if the rainbow was one of them city street rainbows made by the rain falling on the dirty motor oil stain a couple feet from the curb it still was pretty a beautiful rainbow so there’s no reason the luck thing shouldn’t still be there for me right?
I’ll be all right I’ll be okay because what it is is I must have been wrong about Jo. Jo must really love the baby Dennis like I thought she didn’t because why would she steal him away like that if she didn’t. That’s love. So they’ll be all right he’ll be all right and if it hurts me a little bit sometimes and maybe it hurts me a lot other times well that’s all right too because now I know that Jo loves the baby Dennis and she’s gonna take care of him from now on her and that guy whoever he is.
It only hurts for now anyway then I’ll be over it because it’s gonna be my own time soon and the baby Dennis he was never really my own baby anyway no matter what craziness I felt about him and that’s all past. I can’t hardly even remember it in fact is what I’m saying to myself right now.
He had on his hat the yellow round one with the big stitching in it that made his little baby head look like a softball when he wore it. Just like a softball only it was softer even than a softball because his skin and his fuzzy baby hair that still wasn’t growing too fast made the baby Dennis’s real head feel like flannel when you put your nose or your cheek or your big forehead against it. But with the hat on the yellow hat with the big stitches he did still look like a softball a warm soft softball and even if Joanne didn’t have it tied in front like I would have he was still probably okay because it was warm outside that day when he had the hat on and Jo didn’t let me say good-bye.
Anyway soon sooner than you think probably because I’m almost a man already I’m gonna have my own find somebody who’s gonna love me and we’re gonna have some babies and I’m gonna love ’em like hell to pieces like nobody ever loved babies before.
CHRIS LYNCH is the Printz Honor–winning author of several highly acclaimed young adult novels, including Inexcusable, which was a National Book Award Finalist and the recipient of six starred reviews. He is also the author of Gold Dust, Freewill, Iceman, and Shadow Boxer, all ALA Best Books for Young Adults, as well as Little Blue Lies, Pieces, Kill Switch, Angry Young Man, Hothouse, Extreme Elvin, Whitechurch, and All the Old Haunts. Chris teaches in the creative writing MFA program at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He divides his time between Boston and Scotland.
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Chris-Lynch
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ALSO BY CHRIS LYNCH
Inexcusable
Angry Young Man
Kill Switch
Iceman
Pieces
Shadow Boxer
Freewill
Little Blue Lies
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 1994 by Chris Lynch
Previously published in 1994 by HarperCollins
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Jacket Design by Krista Vossen
Interior design by Hilary Zarycky
The text for this book is set in Berling.
First hardcover edition March 2014
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lynch, Chris, 1962–
Gypsy Davey / Chris Lynch. — First edition.
pages cm
Previously published in 1994 by HarperCollins.
Summary: Twelve-year-old Davey is the man of the household, taking care of his mother and older sister as best he can and avoiding them when they are either too mean or too sad.
ISBN 978-1-4424-7284-6 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-1-4424-7287-7 (eBook) —
ISBN 978-1-4424-7285-3 (pbk.)
[1. Family problems—Fiction. 2. Single-parent families—Fiction. 3. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 4. Mothers and sons—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.L979739Gy 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2012049522