Regular Guy by Sarah Weeks Read Free Book Online

drawer—matched socks. Third drawer—T-shirts, all solid colors. When I opened the bottom drawer I noticed that the fish smell suddenly got much stronger, so I poked around in there a little to see if I could figure out the source of the stink. It didn’t take long. Bob-o likes those pants thathave a million pockets in them, and when I pulled a pair of his jeans out of the drawer and held them up by the legs, you wouldn’t believe what fell out of the pockets.
    Little balls of dried-up tuna fish. For some reason Bob-o had balled up tuna fish and stuffed it into his pockets. No wonder he smelled putrid—the guy was a walking compost heap. I stuffed the pants back into the drawer, kicked the fish balls under the dresser with the tip of my shoe, and pushed a big stack of books up against it, hoping that would help keep the smell under control.
    I looked around some more, but there wasn’t anything cool on Bob-o’s shelves. He didn’t have any baseball cards or model cars. Pretty much all he had was a million science-fiction paperbacks. On the back of his door was a Star Trek calendar with hardly anything written on it. From the looks of it, the only regular social event in Bob-o’s life was his weekly visit to the allergist. After I’d been in Bob-o’s room for about an hour, Mrs. Smithknocked on the door. I was surprised I hadn’t heard her coming. It was probably a combination of the wall-to-wall carpet and the fact that she wore quiet shoes. She didn’t actually open the door, she just spoke to me through it.
    â€œI thought I should let you know that we eat dinner at six fifteen, dear, so if you’re hungry now you might want to go downstairs and have a snack,” she said. I told her that I wasn’t really hungry yet, and she said she hoped I liked beef stew because that’s what they always have on Friday nights. Once we’d squared away the dinner menu, she went down the hall and I heard her close her bedroom door behind her. There was nothing left to do in Bob-o’s room, so I decided to go downstairs and check out the volcano.
    The basement light was on already, and I could hear Mr. Smith puttering around down there. I went down and asked him if it was okay for me to erupt the volcano, which was sitting in the corner near the washingmachine. He was very busy fiddling around with an old toaster oven he’d taken apart, so it took him a minute before he even answered me.
    â€œTell you what, young man,” he said, “that thing makes an awful stink when you set it off. How would it be if you find something else to do instead?”
    â€œOkay,” I said. I thought maybe I might hang around a little longer down there and try to impress him with how normal I was, but he was sort of bent over his workbench with his back to me and I got the feeling he didn’t want to talk. I went back upstairs and tried to watch a little TV, but I was too restless to sit still for long. I found myself wondering what Bob-o was up to at my house. I wondered if my mother had tie-dyed his underwear yet or if my dad was doing his magic tricks for him.
    The phone rang, which made me jump about a mile since it was so quiet around there. Mrs. Smith called down to me, “Guy,telephone call for you. Someone named Buzz.”
    I took the call in the kitchen.
    â€œHey, Buzz,” I said, glad to hear his voice on the other end.
    â€œHey, big guy, how’s it going?”
    â€œGreat. Very peaceful. Very normal.”
    â€œBob-o’s room okay?” he asked.
    â€œA little fishy, but otherwise okay,” I said.
    â€œGood. Sounds like you’ve got things under control, so I’m gonna go check on Bob-o. I’m thinking maybe I better ride over there and sneak in the back ’cause if I call, your mom’s gonna ask me whose shoes I’m walking in this weekend and that could get complicated. I wouldn’t want to blow this thing for