And Don't Bring Jeremy Read Online Free PDF

Eddie. A few times he told me how nasty Eddie was to him in school—sticking out his tongue or making some comment about being dumb.
    “Well, he’s nice to me,” I’d answer him. “If you don’t like Eddie, keep away from him.”
    “Oh, I do,” Jeremy said. “Far away.”
    Our team won the fourth game we played, giving us a record of two wins and two losses. The final score was 12–8. We were all proud because we knew that we’d hit and fielded well. I was especially glad because I hit a double in the second inning, not to mention that I struck out seven players—four in a row! I even helped make a double play. Boy, did the parents cheer. At the end of the game we whooped and jumped, patting each other on the back.
    “Think you’re so great, don’t you, Krasner?” Eddie asked, smirking at me.
    “Not bad,” I answered modestly. “We’re all pretty good, don’t you think?”
    “Yeah, we’re all pretty good,” he mimicked me.
    “What’s wrong now?” I asked him, but Eddie just walked away. What ticked him off like that? I shook my head, wondering. It took away some of the joy of victory.
    Thank God Danny wasn’t moody like that. He was cheerful and easy to be with. Mrs. Casey had given him the go-ahead for the sets and he spent part of every day after school drawing the outlines of the actual sets on enormous pieces of cardboard. At first Mrs. Casey kept looking over his shoulder, telling him to be careful. Danny kept assuring her that he was careful. After a few days she saw that he was doing a good job and she calmed down. She went about her own business, straightening up the art room, telling Danny to be sure to let her know if he needed her for anything. Finally she stopped staying there at all.
    I don’t know why I stayed there with Danny. He certainly didn’t need me yet. I suppose I just liked being there with him. Sometimes we chatted while he drew—about school, about baseball. Once he told me that he had wanted to be friendly with me when I first came into class, but that I seemed so aloof and unfriendly. I was so astonished I didn’t know what to say.
    Other times, when I knew he was concentrating on something difficult, he didn’t say a word. Just followed the pencil with one eye shut, his lips pursed into a circle. I had enough sense to keep quiet then, but I didn’t mind. If it went on long enough, I just took out my books and started my homework. But it never went on for too long.
    Danny must have heard Eddie riling me after the game, because the following Monday, after making some comment about the other team not being that strong, he looked me straight in the eye.
    “I sure hope you’re not letting Eddie Gordon upset you by anything he says.” He waited to see if I’d say anything, then he went on. “He can get pretty nasty when someone does something better than he does—like your pitching on Saturday.”
    I was too embarrassed to say anything. I cleared my throat. So what if I struck out one more person than Eddie did? Big deal. “Well, I don’t know,” I said.
    “Well, I know, and so does my cousin Mark. Eddie gets jealous over the least little thing. Mark used to be pretty friendly with him until he got sick and tired of Eddie’s best-pal routine one day and insults the next.”
    Amazing. “I didn’t know Mark felt that way,” I blurted out. “I thought they were good friends.”
    “I know for a fact that Mark won’t have anything to do with Eddie alone. Eddie knows it, too. But my cousin’s not going to stop playing ball after school just ’cause Eddie’s there.”
    “It must be hard on Mark, having Mr. Gordon as a coach.”
    Danny smiled. “Mr. Gordon’s fair enough. Eddie must have asked his father to put Mark on the team months ago. And since we’re all together, there’s no point in making a fuss.”
    Danny went back to blocking out the sets. He was working on the last one, the office. It had lots of details and he was taking pains to do a good