Boy Minus Girl Read Online Free PDF

find it difficult to concentrate or to look any female in the eye. Who in my very own school is shaved down there? What makes a girl decide to shave or not? Is it just a matter of taste? Like how a girl styles her hair? Or is it a—a health thing? What does Charity Conners do?
    Keeping myself concealed is my biggest challenge this morning. By lunchtime I’m desperate for relief. So, while everyone is in the cafeteria innocently eating cabbage biscuits and peach cobbler, I sneak into the empty and dark gymnasium and stuff some napkins into my underwear. A double check to make sure I’m alone, then I proceed to the corner where the climbing rope dangles. Hoisting myself onto the thick cotton-and-hemp cord, I press my thighs together and strain to pull myself up.
    Up and down, up and down. That familiar warm, intense, and intoxicating pulsing starts, and then I hear: “Eckhardt?!”
    I twist around and look down at Coach Turkle framed in the doorway, his beefy hands on his hips. “What the hell’re you doing?”
    “Uh, hey, Coach.” God, my voice is so warbly. “I was just . . . practicing.”
    “You know better than to be in here without supervision.”
    I ease myself to the floor as Coach Turkle approaches. “Practicing, huh? I like to hear that, Eckhardt.” He pulls on the rope, as if making sure it’s secure. “Y’know, rope climbing is a terrific full-body workout, and it could save your life someday, too. Tell ya what, I got some time right now, let me show you a few things.”
    “Coach, you don’t have—”
    He reaches out, handing me the rope. “Go on now.” I moan inwardly.
    “The rope needs to go between your legs like so,” he says as he threads it around my knees and back between the insteps of my sneakers.
    My hands burn, my arms are shaking.
    “Now clamp your feet together.”
    I do, discovering that when I support my weight with my feet, my arms no longer shake.
    “When you clamp your feet like that, it functions as a brake, freeing up your hands and arms,” he says. “Now, I want you to start inchworming yourself up: bend your legs, loosen the brake with your feet, and pull yourself up about a foot. Let’s see you do it.”
    My heart pumps and my arms strain, but it isn’t too painful—tough, but manageable. Soon I have climbed higher than I’ve ever been. I glance down and feel dizzy, seeing how small Coach looks.
    “You got it!” he says. “Remember to bend those legs.”
    Looking up, I can’t believe I’m a mere few feet from the red line that marks the Monkey Club.
    “Go on up to that line, Les! You can do it!”
    My arms are starting to shake again. I think I feel a hernia forming.
    “You’re almost there!” he yells. “Take a breather, then do one more big pull!”
    I inhale deeply and heave myself up. Suddenly my nose is touching the red line. Coach claps and cheers. “You did it, Les! You did it!”
    I cling to the rope, catching my breath and laughing. I have done the impossible! Only the most in-shape jocks make it to the Monkey Club.
    “Now inchworm your way down—slow and steady,” Coach orders. “Just do the reverse of what I showed you.”
    When my sneakers touch the mat, I’m breathless but feeling really good. This is the most working out I’ve done in years, or ever. Coach Turkle pumps my hot and tingly right hand.
    “You’re stronger than you think, Eckhardt,” he says. “A little more refinement of your technique and we’ll have you clambering up to that ceiling like a three-toed monkey. What do you say I meet you in here tomorrow, same time?”
    “Uh, okay.”
    “See you then.” He cuffs my shoulder before ambling out of the gymnasium.
    I collapse on the mat, my chest heaving from laughter. Who knew? What else could this Monkey Boy do?

    “Fact—or fallacy?” asks Howard. “The human eyeball moves one hundred times per second.”
    “Fact, but only when Charity Conners walks by,” I quip.
    Side by side we’re coasting down Walnut