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

like the invisible cream. Not bad, but just enough to give me butterflies. There’s always the thing I didn’t do right or say right. I come to school with unfinished homework or I get punished for lost papers or talking out in class or arguing or falling out of my chair or writing notes during homeroom.
    The thing is, I
try
to be good. It’s as if I can’t helpmyself, as if there’s some other person inside my skin. And he’s the guy with learning disabilities who can’t sit still.
    Trout was standing at the corner waiting for me. He was carrying a large plastic bag from my mother’s drugstore and drinking a grape Slurpee.
    “So here’s the deal,” he said, motioning for me to follow him. We stopped just beyond a grove of trees in the park next to school and Trout dropped the plastic bag on the ground and opened it.
    “Look,” he said.
    I looked.
    The bag was full of Super Balls. There must have been a hundred of these tiny bouncy rubber balls in reds and yellows and blues and greens. I’d never seen so many in my life.
    I like Super Balls. I have a few at home, like three or four, and I like to lie on the couch at the end of the day, bouncing a Super Ball on the hardwood floor to see if I can get it to hit the ceiling.
    “So whaddya think?”
    “About the balls?”
    “Cool, right?” Trout asked.
    “Yeah, pretty cool,” I said. “They must have been expensive.”
    “Forty-nine cents each. I put them on my father’s credit card,” Trout said.
    “He lets you have his credit card?” I asked.
    “Of course not, banana brain.” Trout raised his eyebrows. “I took it out of his wallet this morning while he was taking a shower,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll put it back tonight.”
    “And he won’t notice?”
    “He’s got plenty of credit cards,” Trout said, slinging the bag of Super Balls over his shoulder, heading in the direction of school. And I followed him.
    Trout didn’t tell me his plan for the Super Balls until we were standing in the corridor outside homeroom and he was stuffing the bag from the drugstore into his locker.
    “So this is what we’re going to do.” He shut the door to his locker. “Just before lunch when the bell rings and everyone is rushing down the hall to the lunchroom, we stand on the steps leading to the library and dump the balls in the hallway.”
    “All of them?”
    “All of them.”
    “So what happens?”
    “So there’ll be all these balls bouncing down the hall and all these kids running to lunch and it’ll be very funny.”
    “Not if we get caught.”
    “We won’t get caught.” Trout leaned on my shoulder. “We’ll ask to be excused to go to the bathroom just before the bell, like eleven forty-five, and no one will notice. The hall will be empty and then the bell will ring and we’ll dump the balls just as the kids are dismissed for lunch. Get it?”
    “I get it.”
    “And you’ll help me out, Ben?”
    I didn’t answer right away. I didn’t know if I really wanted to dump Super Balls in the hallway between homeroom and the lunchroom. It seemed pretty easy to get caught in the first place, and in the second, it didn’t sound funny enough to get into trouble.
    I couldn’t decide until fourth period, when we have advanced reading. Fourth period, the Super Ball deal was sealed.
    Everyone, including me, has advanced reading even though I really should be in “behind reading” instead of advanced, but there is no behind. Ms. Ashford teaches advanced and we read long books at home, one chapter a night, and we have a discussion in class. I don’t like Ms. Ashford and I don’t like reading discussions and I usually don’t even read the chapter, unless Meg or my mom has time to help me out, since reading is hard for me. If I do read the chapter, I will have forgotten what I read by the time I’ve finished because I’m such a slow reader. Bythe time I’m at the end of the chapter, I can’t remember the beginning. And that’s just the