Artifacts by Pete Catalano Read Free Book Online Page A

and then started clapping their hands.
    For that moment, at least, everybody loved Crunch.
    “Hey, guys, that was great!” Crunch yelled. “Thanks.”
    “Yeah, great.” Mouth laughed.
    “Don’t ever do it again!” Tank snarled.
    Crunch put his hands up and took a step back. “I won’t. I’m good for a while.”
    “What’s going on?” Mouth asked. “I almost didn’t get breakfast at your house today.”
    I cracked up. “Almost? They told you I left for school and you still stayed for breakfast?”
    “I wasn’t going to,” Mouth said, “but your mom made me. I really had to eat and run with your dad sitting right there staring at me, waiting for me to finish.”
    “What the heck are you doing at school so early?” Crunch asked.
    “I slept here last night,” I told Crunch. “I read on the Internet that if you’re younger than fifteen, you grow an inch for every night you spend sleeping in your school.”
    “Really?” Crunch whispered, unbelievably excited that he had been told such a secret. “Oh, my gosh. If I live here for a month, I’ll be like seven feet tall! If I live here for a year, I’ll be over thirty-four feet tall!”
    “You should do it,” Mouth said. “Imagine being able to look down on all these knuckleheads who’ve been smashing you for all these years. Tank’s a perfect example.”
    Crunch nodded so fast I thought his head was going to fall off.
    “What are you talking about?” Tank yelled at Mouth.
    Mouth cracked up.
    The bell rang before Tank smashed anybody, even though I knew he wanted to.
    “Hey, we need to meet in the cafeteria later,” I yelled.
    Standing by our lockers was always like a launch pad. No matter what time of day it was, it didn’t take long before the crowds built to such a level that you could just jump out in the middle of them and be swept in various directions.
    The bell for first period rang and I was already late for gym class.
    Mr. Butkus, the gym teacher, didn’t like me. Running across his basketball court after class had started was going to make him like me even less…as if that were even possible.
    Cutting through the locker room, I looked out onto the court and saw the class running laps. Waiting until the first half of the pack passed me, I made a mad dash and slipped into the middle of them.
    The moment the door bumped closed, Butkus’s ears perked up. His head turned around slowly as if he was on a hunt.
    He sniffed the air.
    “Jackson Murphy is in the house!” Butkus bellowed, the sound bouncing off nearly every surface in the gym.
    “In the house!” Mr. Durkin, the assistant gym teacher, yelled moments later.
    Mr. Butkus was one of those freakishly monstrous, born-to-be-a-gym-teacher type of guys with his Popeye arms and peanut head. Durkin was his yappy little Chihuahua of an assistant, repeating everything he said seconds after he said it. Short, round, black hair, dark eyes, he always wore a red button-up shirt and black sweatpants. The kids all called him Jerkin … mostly behind his back.
    Except for Tank. Tank always called him Jerkin to his face.
    Butkus was the other teacher I didn’t care for at the school. Butkus and Bartholomew. And from what I can remember, they both started at the school around the same time.
    “Sorry, Mr. Butkus,” I apologized, with as little feeling as possible.
    I just kept running with the others, hoping it would blow over.
    But it didn’t.
    By that time, everybody had stopped running laps. They were milling around and staring at us, waiting for Butkus’s explosion.
    “Sorry doesn’t help,” Butkus bellowed.
    “Doesn’t help.” Durkin repeated, waving his hand and snapping his fingers.
    “Sorry doesn’t get your arms the size of my arms.”
    “The size of his arms.” Durkin said.
    “Or the head the size of a peanut,” I muttered.
    “Or the head the size of a pea— ” Durkin started, then realized what he was saying. “The size of his arms”
    Butkus stared at Durkin, who