Beetle Boy Read Online Free PDF

us both after my tragic revelation.
    Ice cream? A waffle with chocolate syrup? And you can tell me more about your cousin, okay?
    I embellish the lie for half an hour, making up people, places, and events. We have waffles with ice cream, with chocolate syrup and M&M’s on top. Clara is trying to help me gain weight. The pain pills have killed my appetite. Clara is quiet, saddened by my fake memories.
    You should hear the real ones , I think. I make a mental note to get the box out of her closet and hide it somewhere else ASAP.

FIVE
    After the first few terrible months at Green Grove Apartments, I asked Dad to please, please find us a babysitter. He said no way could he afford one, but I happened to know that his father in Jamaica—Grampa Ned—had sent him a big check. A letter had arrived in one of those thin blue envelopes that you can see through with foreign stamps all over it, and when I held it up to the light, I saw that there was a check in it. Then I just had to know how much, so I did this thing I saw Mom do a couple of times, open letters with steam from the teakettle and then close them back up again with a little glue, except Mom would stand at the stove and cry. Me, I was pretty happy. Grampa Ned’s check was for $10,000.
    â€œDad, if you hire somebody young, you hardly have to pay her anything. And with a babysitter, you would be totally free twenty-four-seven to work with Sam on my books.”
    I wasn’t thinking only of Liam. The girl I had already chosen to be our sitter lived in the same apartment building as us. I had decided that I loved her madly. Rita had red braids so tight that she had a bright white part down the back of her head. She was an older woman—almost twelve. I wanted her to be in the same room with me as much as possible. I wanted to impress her with my budding career. I wanted her to sit beside me on our ratty sofa. I wanted to watch her eating day-old pizza at our dirty kitchen table. You get the picture.
    Rita became our first post-Mom babysitter. Dad hired her to work from three until six on school days and just about every Friday and Saturday night for the next three months, freeing him up for whatever dates he could arrange in his new bachelor life. He paid her five dollars an hour—what a cheapskate—but I guess she was okay with it.
    I worshipped her. Did she like me? Maybe. As much as a twelve-year-old girl can like a geeky six-year-old who talks incessantly about himself. Every so often, she would squeeze her eyes shut and cover her ears and tell me to pleeeeeassse shut up ! It was adorable.
    Unfortunately, she couldn’t stand Liam. She ignored his lame attempts to also get her attention, despite that he was a pretty cute kid, much cuter than me—he had inherited Dad’s blond good looks, but I surpassed him in charm and sophistication. I knew better than to gurgle and spit milk across the kitchen table or climb to the top of the fridge and sit up there like the Cheshire cat or march out of the bathroom with no pants on, waving his dick. Anything to get her to pay attention to him.
    â€œWatch me dance, Rita!” he would crow. Then he would fling himself around the room, whirling his arms, wearing a cape made from a dish towel. Or he would break into song for no reason, singing whatever ridiculous song he had learned at pre-kindergarten that day in a piping voice, with his face way too close to her face. She would push him away, asking, “What is wrong with you?”
    â€œSeriously, what is wrong with your brother?” she asked me. She had locked him in the bedroom for a time-out while the two of us watched TV in the living room at maximum volume to drown out his hollering.
    â€œWrong how?” I asked back.
    â€œIs there something about your brother that your dad didn’t tell me?”
    This gave me pause. “There’s nothing wrong with him,” I insisted. “He’s just a creepy