Your Move, J. P.! Page 9

  But there he was, no fantasy at all. There was Ralph, blowing his nose loudly into his filthy handkerchief.

  "Hi, Ralph!" J.P. said.

  "You again."

  "Yeah, me again. I did it, Ralph! I told the truth! And I won the chess tournament, and—oh, I almost forgot. This is Hope. Hope, this is my friend Ralph."

  Ralph folded the handkerchief and replaced it in his pocket. He bent over, coughing for a minute, and then looked up.

  "Hope," he said, appraising her with his inflamed, watery eyes. "Not a bad name. An H. H for Hope."

  "And H for honesty, Ralph," J.P. told him. "How about that? We could do a whole alphabet of character—what's the opposite of flaws?"

  "Attributes," Hope suggested.

  "Yeah, character attributes! How about that, Ralph? I already have the one that comes after honesty. Integrity." J.P. glowed. He felt filled with honesty and integrity and all the attributes to come. "How about it, Ralph?"

  Ralph peered at him skeptically. "You do what you want, kid," he said. "Whatever turns you on. Me, I'm gonna feed pigeons, okay?" He pulled a plastic bag of bread scraps from his pocket.

  "Come on, J.P.," Hope said. "I want to go up to the pond and see if anybody's sailing model boats. Bye, Ralph! I'm glad to have met you!" She waved politely and ran on down the path.

  J.P. watched her. Behind him, the pigeons made chuckling, murmuring sounds as they took the bread from Ralph's hands with nervous pecks. The sun caught Hope's hair as it bounced on her shoulders; and just for a minute—well, maybe only a second—it looked, J.P. thought, like burnished copper.

  He began to laugh aloud. The image had lasted for only an instant. When he looked again, it was just his redheaded pal, Hopie. Behind him was not a mystic, not a philosopher, but just a wheezing guy named Ralph.

  And himself? He was nobody but ordinary old J.P. Tate.

  But he did feel, when he ran ahead to catch up with Hope, that for the first time in ages he was almost weightless, and completely unencumbered.