I Sailed with Magellan Read Online Free PDF Page B

for points not to tell Sir. He’d just lost fifteen and was already a hundred and twenty in the hole.
    â€œHey, Toes, you eat boogers.”
    Invasion of the Body Snatchers was coming this weekend, and Mick really wanted to see that.
    I heard him getting out of bed, and I tensed, keeping my eyes closed and trying not to break up. I could feel him standing over me.
    â€œHey, Toesush,” he whispered.

    I heard him rubbing his fingers together near my face, beneath my nose. He was chuckling maniacally. “I guess you really are sleeping,” he said, then got back in bed.
    We lay there completely quiet for a while.
    â€œI’m sure glad you’re sleeping, because you know what I did? I cleaned my kregs and sprinkled the toe-jam on your face.”
    My not saying anything was really driving him nuts. He shut up for a long time after that. When I figured he was about to drop off to sleep, I started to snore.
    â€œShut up! I know you’re fakin.”
    I mumbled in my sleep and snored louder, and he bounced up again and gave my bed a shake. I rolled over with a groan as if in the middle of a dream. He gave me a jab in the back, then threw himself into bed.
    He was turned toward the wall, convinced against his best judgment that I really was asleep, and trying now to sleep himself. Except for the ding of a freight train blocks away and a single cricket still trilling in the gangway, it was very quiet.
    â€œYou just lost a hundred points, matey,” I said.
    He kind of flinched, then pretended he was sleeping.
    â€œYou might as well forget about that movie. I bet it’s really gonna be great, too. The coming attractions were fantastic. Oh well, I guess you didn’t want to see it anyway. That’s why you’re not saying anything. At least you ain’t gonna beg. Which is smart because there’s no way I’m changing my mind. Not after having toe-jam sprinkled in my face. And getting socked in the back. That was a test. Now I know what kind of stuff goes on when I really am sleeping. Well, okay, good night, I’m going to Dreamsville.”
    I tucked the sheet over my head and curled up in the middle of the mattress. Both of us knew he no longer believed in Dreamsville, but neither of us was about to admit it. A year ago he’d still been convinced I had a secret trapdoor in my bed that
led to a clubhouse full of sodas, malts, popcorn, candy, a place where the stray dogs and cats in the neighborhood gathered at night. In Dreamsville, animals could talk. Sometimes celebrities like Bugs Bunny would drop in.
    Mick would hear fragments of our merrymaking, muffled as if the trapdoor had been left ajar: my voice saying, “Hi, Whiskers. Hi, Topsy. Oh, hi there, Mousie Brown, you here tonight?”
    Whiskers was our cat, supposedly out for the night. Topsy was Kashka’s ginger-colored watchdog. He was supposed to guard the chickens she kept illegally, but he’d let me sneak over her fence, and while he wagged his tail, I’d untie the clothesline noosed around his neck and boost his back end over the fence into the alley. Whenever we managed an escape, he’d spend the rest of the day following Mick and me around the streets until Kashka or one of her demented wino friends caught him again. Though Kashka had never caught me in the act, she knew I was the one springing Topsy, and hated me for it, not that I cared. Mick and I loved Topsy and had planned to steal him for good when we got old enough not to need Sir’s permission to keep him, but a couple of weeks ago I’d sprung him and the dogcatchers caught him. Kashka had just replaced him with a black puppy.
    Mousie Brown was the name of Mick’s favorite stuffed animal, one he slept with until a night when, sick with flu, he puked all over it. When Moms tried to clean it, the fur washed off, leaving behind a raggedy, bald lump that reeked of vomit, so she threw it out on the sly.
    They’d all bark