Elliot Allagash Read Online Free PDF

he’s got the new Penny Hardaways,” I said.
    “Exactly! The most ostentatious shoes on the market. He
has
towear them, to prove that his family can finally afford them! He’s like a caveman with a piece of ivory through his nose. Sure, Lance is proud of those shoes. But when his children see photographs, they’ll be embarrassed that their father had to
try
so hard. And his grandchildren—they’ll be downright mortified.”
    I looked down at Elliot’s shoes. They were hand-stitched loafers made out of what appeared to be alligator skin. They had silver tips and golden buckles and their soles were the color of blood.
    “What about
those?”
I asked.
    Elliot shrugged.
    “The Allagashes have come full circle.”
    • • •
    Lance may have been the first boy in class to wear Penny Hardaway sneakers, but by the day of tryouts, so many boys had started copying him that he felt the need to upgrade. He was wearing the new Air Jordans—an obscenely priced shoe with gold-plated laces and some kind of removable sleeve. No one noticed them until study hall, when he cocked back his chair and propped both feet up on his desk.
    It was a pretty disruptive gesture, but Mr. Hendricks kept his mouth shut. Hendricks was a nervous man, a frail French teacher whose hands shook comically when he yelled. He wore tweed jackets and dark-framed glasses but he couldn’t hide the fact that he was the youngest teacher at our school. It was clear from the neatness of his exams, the care he put into his recycling murals, and the way he winced when students complained about the homework. Elliot mocked him incessantly—particularly for thelow quality of his tweeds—but he was easily my favorite teacher. He was the only one I could relate to.
    Jessica and Lance started whispering and Mr. Hendricks took out a book, pretending he didn’t notice. When their voices grew too loud to ignore, he went to the bathroom so he wouldn’t have to yell at them.
    “You should check out tryouts,” Lance told Jessica.
    “I’ve got cheerleading.”
    I was sitting right behind them; I noticed that at some point Jessica had propped her feet up next to his.
    “You guys could get a head start on the season,” Lance said. “Cheer me on today.”
    She inched her feet closer to his, until they were practically touching.
    “I’ll be there.”
    My stomach tightened. I was already nervous enough without the threat of female witnesses. If Jessica went, all the girls would. I’d been training for months—what if it all ended in disaster? The only thing that calmed me was the sight of Elliot. He was gazing out the window, arms folded, a serene smile on his face. As hard as it was to imagine myself succeeding, it was even harder to imagine that Elliot could fail.
    • • •
    A few hours before tryouts, Mr. Hendricks took us over to the playground for recess. I was running through some yoga stretches Vlad had taught me when I heard a commotion by the water fountain. A tall man wearing a giant foam Butterfinger costumewas handing out Nestlé product samples. I instinctively began to run toward him when I felt Elliot’s hand clamp down on my shoulder.
    “It’s for them,” he said. “Not you.”
    I looked across the playground. Mr. Hendricks was urging the students to “just take one!” but it was too late. Lance had already organized some kind of eating contest, and the other boys were cheering him on, loudly chanting his name. The man in the foam costume emptied the rest of his sample crate onto the ground and the larger boys began to wrestle over them. Then he nodded once at Elliot and was gone.
    “Oh my God,” I said. “Was that
James?”
    Elliot leaned against the jungle gym and stared at the crowd.
    “Look at the animals,” he said. “Eating their sugar.”
    He looked at his watch.
    “Sometimes it’s almost too easy.”
    • • •
    Mr. Hendricks usually had to turn off the lights to get us to pay attention to Final Announcements. But an intense