All the Right Stuff by Walter Dean Myers Read Free Book Online

all?”
    â€œThat’s all,” Sly said.
    Sly went into his pocket and pulled out a five-dollar bill and handed it to me. I was scared to take it and scared not to take it. I wanted to look over at D-Boy to see what he was doing, but I didn’t want Sly to see me doing it.
    Finally I took the money, then I took a deep breath and walked to the corner store. I could feel Sly’s eyes following me, and I couldn’t even walk cool. I bought the soda, made sure it was cold, then took it up the hill.
    Broadhurst was crowded, but I saw a dude who looked kind of down and out, and I walked up to him.
    â€œYo, you want a soda?”
    He took the soda and just looked at me.
    â€œSo, what you got to say?” I asked him as he twisted the cap off the soda.
    He took a long, slow drink, then gave me a mean look. “I ain’t saying nothing,” he said. “I didn’t ask you for no soda.”
    â€œOkay.” I shrugged and turned.
    â€œYo, pretty boy!”
    I turned back.
    â€œGo to hell!” he said.
    I went on back down the hill and saw that Sly was still on the stoop. All the way down the hill, I was looking for plainclothes cops. I was thinking that me taking that soda up the hill might have been a signal that the coast was clear or something or some big drug deal was going to go down.
    When I got to the stoop, I handed Sly back his change.
    â€œWhat did he say?” Sly asked.
    â€œFirst he said he didn’t ask me for a soda so he didn’t have to say nothing,” I said. “Then he thought about it and said, ‘Go to hell!’”
    â€œWhat he was saying was that if you got money, you can look down on folks and act like you’re doing them a favor,” Sly said. “But that brother knew that when you left, he still was going to be standing there and still didn’t have anything going on. And he wasn’t buying into your social contract, either. He just wanted to let you know that. Here’s your twenty-five dollars.”
    â€œThat’s okay,” I said.
    â€œNo, it’s not okay,” Sly said. He put the money into my shirt pocket. “When a young man is afraid to deal with his fellow man, it means the system has you so brainwashed that you’re afraid to follow your mind. You put your mind in your pocket and follow the system. The same system that your friend Elijah is calling the social contract.
    â€œYou think you know something when you’re talking about philosophy, but that brother you gave the soda to knows a lot more than you.”
    Sly stepped off the stoop and got into a car I hadn’t seen pull up. He rolled the window down and beckoned for me to come over to the car.
    â€œSo you know all about the social contract, Rousseau, Hobbes, and all those old dudes?” he asked.
    â€œI know some about it,” I said. “I don’t know those guys you’re talking about. But I think I would like to know more.”
    â€œThat’s good,” Sly said. “Only fools don’t want to learn more about everything.”
    He rolled up the window. And he was gone.
    I really had to pee bad.
    I wondered what Sly thought about my father. He thought the dude who told me to go to hell knew something. Maybe he would have thought my father knew something, too.

6
    I knew that Elijah was laying traps for me. Old people like to do that to young people. They set you up to say something and then jump all over it. I thought what Elijah said was interesting, and the way he said it, talking about ham sandwiches and stuff, was funny. But thinking about it when he wasn’t around was still confusing. When I got to the emporium in the morning, I had a bunch of questions ready for Elijah.
    â€œThe way I figure it,” I said after I walked through the door, “is that either everybody follows the social contract bit or nobody follows it. I’m not going to play by some rules if there are people going