Trout and Me by Susan Shreve Read Free Book Online Page A

asked, still in my pajamas.
    “It’s going to be really funny,” he said.
    “Like how funny?” I asked.
    “I can’t tell you now,” he said. “Just meet me on the blacktop behind the school.”
    So I got dressed in a hurry, brushed my teeth, and went downstairs for breakfast with my book bag already packed and ready to go.
    “Why so early?” my mother asked. She was suspicious, I could tell. She worries about me, not that anything bad will happen to me but that I’ll cause trouble. Everyafternoon—this is what Meg told me—she’s afraid some teacher is going to call the pharmacy to tell her more bad news about me, like Ms. Becker did when the invisible cream turned into ASS.
    “Where did you get that cream?” my mother had asked that evening. “Max?”
    I didn’t answer. I wasn’t going to tell her Trout had given it to me and I’d already told Mr. O’Dell about Max, so I said nothing at all, and by the next day, my mom sort of forgot it. But she did say, because she worries all the time, “You should never put anything on your face unless you know what it is. It could’ve been poison.”
    “It’s not
so
early to go to school,” I said. “I just promised to meet some guys from fifth grade on the blacktop behind school.”
    I poured milk on my cereal and pretended to be interested in eating, which I wasn’t. I only wanted to get out of the house and meet Trout and find out about his plan.
    “Benjamin.” My mother sat down at the table beside me, speaking quietly so Meg, who was making toast, wouldn’t hear what she was saying, even though I tell Meg everything. “Are you leaving early to meet Trout?” she asked.
    I considered lying. I thought I could name a few guys in my class who I might be meeting before school, but my mother seems to know what I’m thinking about evenwhen I don’t say it. It’s as if she can see straight through the skin and bone to my brain. So I didn’t make up a story. I mean, I didn’t lie exactly, but I didn’t tell “the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” as my father would say.
    “I’m helping Trout with his math homework,” I said, finishing my cereal, dumping the extra milk in the sink.
    “I see.” My mother gave me one of her looks.
    I could have said, “I can tell you don’t believe me,” or “I’m almost telling the truth,” or I could have said, “I’m meeting Trout Trout on the blacktop and we’re going to make plans to get kicked out of school,” but instead I followed Meg out the front door and down the back stairs.
    “What was
that
all about?” she asked.
    I shrugged. “Mom didn’t believe I was going to be helping Trout with his math homework.”
    “She’s right,” Meg said. “You’re flunking math.” My sister is straightforward and I like that. She says what she thinks and doesn’t seem to care whether what she thinks will make a person mad.
    “I mean, I’m meeting Trout, but he didn’t say anything about math homework.”
    “So Mom’s worried about you meeting Trout because he’s a troublemaker and you made up a reason, right?”
    “Right.”
    “I see.”
    “That’s what Mom said. ‘I see.’ What is it with you guys?”
    Max was stopped in front of our apartment waiting for Meg, smoking a cigarette as usual.
    “Want a ride to school?” Meg asked.
    “Nope, I’ll walk.”
    “Suit yourself,” she said.
    That’s another one of Mom’s expressions. Meg climbed into Max’s red Ford truck.
    “Just don’t get kicked out of school,” she called.
    “You can’t get kicked out of public school,” I said. “It’s the law.”
    “Wrong, Ben. You can get kicked out of any place. Maybe not forever, but for long enough.”
    “Even though I’ve got this learning problem?”
    “Especially because of that.”
    The rest of the way to school, I thought about what Meg had said. I’m not a bad kid—not like a juvenile delinquent. I don’t break the law, but I am always in some kind of trouble at school,