Gentlemen Read Online Free PDF Page B

them a look or shoulder intothem when I walked by, but it’s hard to look tough when you’re squatting down and red in the face, so I just kept my eyes straight ahead and kept my feet shuffling along.
    â€œThis frickin’ sucks,” I said, loud enough for Haberman to hear, and of course, I didn’t really say frickin’. He didn’t say anything. What did he care? We were the ones breaking into a sweat. Mixer and Bones sort of grunted their agreement. They knew what I was talking about. I knew everyone around us was like, There go those losers. Get used to the heavy lifting, boys. They’re no better than me, but that’s not what they were thinking then, and I just wanted to pop someone in the mouth.
    We finally reached the big double doors. Haberman opened the one on the right, and he was like, “After you, gentlemen.”
    He always called us gentlemen. Any group of guys in the hallway or rolling into class a little late got one of those. He called the girls ladies. I wondered what he called the principal, Your Majesty? Anyway, it was like, Yeah, screw you very much, and we were through the doors and out into the sunlight and open air.
    â€œI’ve got to put ’er down for a sec,” said Mixer, and that was fine with me. We dropped the barrel at the top of the wide stone steps that led down into the front parking lot. Just three steps, real short and wide, so they wouldn’t be a problem getting down. I straightened up, and for a second it was actually kind of cool. Being outside on a nice day was onething, but being outside on a nice day when you were supposed to be in the god-awful gloomy hallways of the Tits was another thing entirely. Pretty nice.
    â€œAll right, then,” said Haberman, like he was our boss and not our teacher. Totally ruined it. We leaned back down, wedged our fingers between the heavy plastic and the hard granite. We lifted with our legs and not our backs, like we learned when we helped Tommy’s dad move into his apartment in the city. Gary, who told us that, was Tommy’s stepdad now. It was kind of a bad scene, that move, but it was good advice.
    â€œNot for nothing,” said Bones, “but what the hell’s in this thing?”
    â€œAre you recanting your guess, then, Mr. Bonouil?” said Haberman.
    â€œYep. I’m recanting all of those guesses, everybody’s.”
    â€œEveryone was wrong? Not one of your classmates hit the jackpot?”
    â€œNope,” said Bones. He was grinding his teeth and spitting out his words between huffs and puffs. He wasn’t looking at Haberman, but he was talking right at him, if that makes any sense. He was talking to Haberman like he was a freshman and not a teacher. It’s not a real offense, not like shoving him or something, but it was close to one, especially the way Bones was going about it.
    Bones was just not good at this, at provoking people, picking arguments. He had no volume control, and everything hesaid just sounded like a threat. This was more Mixer’s game, and as long as Bones had hung out with Mixer, he never could pick it up. Bones lacked the mental tools for it, I guess, and the patience.
    Mixer was excellent at this kind of thing, at needling people without giving them any real good excuse to smack him. Since fourth or fifth grade, he’d been able to get the other guy to start it, roomful of witnesses, and then pound the poor kid into the ground “in self-defense.” With teachers, he could just piss them off without giving them any good cause for punishing him. You couldn’t do it all the time, otherwise people would catch on. Mixer knew that. He saved it for special occasions, and he was smart about it.
    Bones was always the other guy, the one it was easy to get going. If you wanted a fight, it’d take all of about three words to get Bones to go. And early on, that happened a lot. Back in elementary school, when he was just