Egg-Drop Blues Read Online Free PDF Page B

I noticed he looked at me and Jury a lot while he was talking, especially when he said no roughhousing. Jury didn't notice because, like the rest of us, he was looking at the dead pigeon that was laying right behind Mr. C. The roof was loaded with cool stuff like that. There were balls and Frisbees and even a dead cat. But the best thing was the view. From the roof you could see everything going on around the school and most of the neighborhood.
    Miss Bailey, a student teacher, was our supervisor and she was nice. She was as interested in the dead cat and pigeon as the rest of us.
    I knew things were going to be all right when
Jury came up to me and handed me a Frisbee after Mr. C. left. I threw it at a group of girls who were standing near the girls' restroom. They didn't have a clue where it came from.
    "This might be okay after all," he said, as we ducked down so the girls couldn't see us.

Chapter 5
    I was hoping Jury would start to take an interest in what I was doing when it became obvious I was building our first egg container.
    He didn't.
    After breakfast on Saturday morning, I took the four eggs that we had left and boiled them. My mother smiled at me when she saw me getting the old pot we use to boil water and eggs. She has this theory that you shouldn't cook food in your water pot because, the way we wash dishes, she could end up with greasy instant coffee. I guess I should have felt pleased about her "good boy" smile, but I didn't. It made me feel stupid. There was my brother, the one they sometimes call the "other half," just sitting there picking at some runny yolk on the edge of his plate. I know he was humming some dumb jingle or seeing the revenge of the yolk people over the
syrup patrol or something just as foolish. First he'd drag his fork through the runny yolk and then the stem of his spoon through the leftover syrup. Sometimes I'd like to be the one sitting around wasting time while he's being the "good boy."
    While the eggs were boiling, I cut two pockets from the egg carton. He put his plate in the sink and then stood at the refrigerator door and drank some orange juice from the carton.
    "I wish you'd stop doing that," I told him.
    "I wish you'd stop talking to me." He put the carton back in the refrigerator.
    "Like we want to drink your backwash in the orange juice!"
    He ignored me. The next thing I heard him say was to Angela on the telephone in the other room.
    "Go figure, two good months before Easter and the boy's in there playing with egg cartons."
    I think Angela must have told him he should be helping me because I heard him say, "Who asked you?" That was when I figured he must have been in a really bad mood to be taking on Angela.
    , Although we spend more time with Tommy now, Angela used to be our best friend in the posse—in the world for that matter. Our mothers are friends and our fathers are friendly. Our fathers don't call each other or go places together, but when they're together they seem comfortable. It's kinda hard on kids when their mothers are friends because they end up telling each other all kinds of embarrassing stuff about their kids. I remember walking through the kitchen one time when I was in the third grade and hearing my mother telling Angela's mother that I had wet the bed the night before. I could have died. I couldn't think what to do, so I did the first thing that came to my mind. I ran over to my mother and hung up the telephone. She screamed because she thought something terrible must have happened to me or my brother. I screamed because I thought her scream meant that she was so mad she was about to hit me. Jury came running in from the back yard, grabbed a steak knife from the drawer, and started yelling, "Where, where?" because he thought somebody was attacking us. Then I started crying.
    When my mother finally got me calmed down I told her that she couldn't tell Mrs. Collins things about us that Mrs. Collins might tell Angela. My mother tries to be what she