Last December Read Online Free PDF Page B

to play yet. Like I said, I’m the master. Here,” he said, getting up and switching seats, “I’ll go first.”
    So I sat in the seat across from him and he put a stack of quarters on the table. He must have been rich, I thought, even though he didn’t really dress like it. He wore a puffy blue winter jacket, which he took off, and jeans and a T-shirt that had a kid with greasy hair and “U2—War” on it, and the guy had greasy brown hair, too, but way longer, and really white teeth that looked like they were kind of too big for his mouth, and I thought he must be a senior or something.
    “So you’ll notice my name there in the high-score list,” he said, and I looked down and all the top-ten scores were called bm best, and I couldn’t help myself. I said, “How do I know that’s you?” and his eyes flickered and he said, “So … you think you’re a real tough guy now?” and I shrugged and looked down and said, “No,” and he leaned forward a bit, and said, “You know it’s me because my name is B for Byron , M for McCarthy , and I’m the effin’ BEST. I never surrender,” and then he said, “Now quit being a dork, and listen up to your first lesson,” and he pointed down at the screen, where I could see the ghosts kind of floating there, waiting for us to play. “THEY are the enemy, and you have to know your enemy, right?” he said, smiling, and I nodded and he said, “Therefore,” and stuck out three fingers in a triangle so that the tips kind of looked like the mathematical therefore sign,  , which I just learned in math. So I laughed.
    And he really smiled at me this time, because I think he liked me laughing at him and he liked that I knew the mathematical therefore sign, so he said it again and stuck out his fingers. “Therefore … I’ll fill you in … So Blinky is the red one, and he is enemy number one. He can smell you from miles away, andhe’s not happy until your three lives are done. Pinky is Pink, right? No guff. And he’s like a deputy guy—not quite as smart and fast, but he’s still going to take you down if you give him a chance,” and his eyes were alive and kind of crazy-looking, and he sort of garbled his words because they wouldn’t come out fast enough. “And Inky is the green guy and he’s tricky. He’s following you one second and then all of a sudden he’s off doing something else like he’s got other business to attend to. And last but not least is Sue the Stoner,” he said, grinning.
    “Stoner?” I asked, and he said, “Yeah, like too much doobage,” and he put his thumb and middle finger to his mouth like he was smoking a marijuana joint, and I said, “Oh,” and he said, “Yeah,” his eyes half-closed like he was totally out of it. “She’s like, ‘Whoa, maaaan. Look at this cool maze. Yeahhh, I wonder what I’m doing in here, look at the red walls, and whoa, there’s another ghost just like me, and hey, there’s this yellow chick with a bow in her hair, better stay away from her,’” and I looked at him like he was an alien, and then he started laughing, and he finally said, “Yeah, well, anyway, you don’t have to worry about Sue. The only way she’s going to kill you is if you run into her, so don’t do it again.”
    Zero
    And then Byron grabbed two coins and slipped them into the machine. “And that’s all you need to know about your enemy, kid, except you always have to be prepared for the Chaos Factor,” and then he just froze, looking at me with wild eyes, and I noddedlike I knew what he was talking about, but then suddenly he leaned right across the tabletop and said really really seriously, “So what is the Chaos Factor, then, kid?” and I shrugged, but it was like he didn’t see me do it, because he was in another world, and then he leaned back in his chair and looked just above my head, and then all of a sudden, his eyes were back on me like glue and his mouth was having trouble getting the words out