Eggplant Alley (9781593731410) Read Online Free PDF

little man was a hippie. One of Them. Now and then Mr. McSwiggin spoke of rock ’n’ roll music that he favored. This, from a teacher. Hippie stuff. Nicky already had a bellyful of hippies in his life, starting and ending with Roy’s horrid hippie girlfriend Margalo.
    And here was Mr. McSwiggin, leading the class down the block in this very hippie-style endeavor.
    â€œToday we will clean this little space,” Mr. McSwiggin said. “Tomorrow the world.”
    â€œPinko,” Nicky muttered.
    They marched out of school with bags and rakes and did a job on an empty lot, which didn’t even belong to St. Peter’s. The students at St. Peter’s had not made the mess, but here they were cleaning it up. The seventh-graders picked up dirty bottles, crushed cartons, bashed cans, yellowed newspapers, wadded wrappers, smashed cigarette packs, shredded cigarette butts. The girls performed most of the actual cleaning. They worked earnestly, with a solemn goodness in their eyes. The boys mostly threw things, wandered aimlessly, and searched for oddball treasures. Vinnie Slezak found a container of glop that smelled like airplane glue. Tim Gemelli produced a knob from a car radio.
    Nicky went all-out to find bottles. He dug into thick weeds. He crawled under a splintered wooden fence. He turned over rusted sheets of tin. He did this in order to impress the yellow-hairedBecky Hubbard, who carted around the bottle bag. He scrounged up four bottles, and made sure Becky Hubbard was alone when he dropped them, clanking, into the bottle bag. She said nothing. Nicky thought, “She’s shy.”
    Nicky was a mess when he got home from school. His hands were black to the wrists. The knees of his good school pants were caked with mud. He had a cut above his eye, from the trip under the fence. His cheek was smeared with oily grime.
    â€œWhat happened? Were you in a fight? Were you mugged?” Mom wanted to know.
    He told her about the Earth Day activities.
    â€œGreat, we’re sending you to school to learn how to be a garbage picker,” Mom said. “Look at you. At least the vacant lot is nice and clean, right?”
    She glanced over the other piece of Mr. McSwiggin’s Earth Day lesson. Nicky had produced a Crayola rendition of our planet, continents and oceans and all. The masterpiece was captioned in block letters, as instructed by Mr. McSwiggin: THE EARTH IS YOUR MOTHER .
    â€œOh, yeah?” Mom said. “Next time you need to puke at three in the morning, have the Earth bring you a bucket. What baloney. What’s going on at that school?”
    Nicky shrugged. Another sign of the general downhill slide.
    Mom went on, “And since when does anybody clean up after their mother? What baloney. Go wash up. Change your clothes. But go get the mail first, will you?”
    That was the real source of Mom’s touchy mood. The mail. There wasn’t a single piece of it from Roy, not since the pre-printed postcard.
    â€œUnless his fingers got cut off, he should write,” Mom said quietly, sadly.
    Nicky was happy to travel to the lobby for the mail. The chore once belonged to Roy. Young Nicky was awed in the old days when his big brother ventured alone to the lobby and returned with the day’s mail. In Nicky’s young eyes, Roy was a dashing explorer, a regular Lewis or Clark.
    Mom told Nicky, “Remember, don’t take the stairs, don’t talk to strangers, don’t linger down there. For crying out loud, if Mr. Feeley gets on the elevator, you get off at the very next floor. Did I tell you not to take the stairs?”
    â€œA million times,” Nicky said. “Why not? Roy always took the stairs.”
    â€œTimes have changed,” Mom said.
    â€œOh, yeah,” Nicky thought. “How could I forget?”
    Nicky pressed for the elevator. The elevator shaft came alive with the growly hum of heavy machinery. The elevator thumped and stopped on the