Little Boy Read Online Free PDF

laughed about it. They
talked all about how much fun it was, and about how they’d met some
great priests there and everything, but I knew it was all baloney.
They must have been bullshitting, because there’s no way they could
have enjoyed that goddamn camp.
     
    So Paul, like Kevin years before, was pegged
as my innocent nerdy friend from the first day I met him. And from
that day on I ceaselessly mentioned that priest camp to him and
laughed in his face about it. I don’t even know why the poor guy
hung around with me, but he did. We kept hanging out throughout
high school, and we’re still sort of friends today, though I
haven’t seen him in a while.
     
    The point of all this is that I always picked
on Paul, just because he was Paul. Picture it: He was a short guy,
with connected eyebrows, and two nostrils big enough to snugly fit
a can of Coke a piece. It’s difficult to describe.
     
    But aside from all that, I made fun of him
because he’d never had a girlfriend. I don’t think he was gay or
anything. Oh, he tried like a sonofabitch to get girls, but never
to any avail. I didn’t so much make fun of Paul as I did talk about
my girlfriends in front of him all the time. And I knew that while
Paul approved of my adventures on the surface, deep down inside he
was confused as hell: He wished he was as successful with girls as
I was, and yet my stories sickened him. I tacitly ridiculed him for
that, too: for consistently resenting me but not having the balls
to say so.
     
    Paul was so goddamn insecure and confused
that one time he actually made believe he had a girlfriend when he
didn’t. It all happened after I told him about Rachel, this girl
who whacked me off next to a fire extinguisher in the third floor
stairwell. Like always, he looked pretty jealous that day. But the
next day he came into school and told my friends and me that he’d
met a girl by the bus stop that morning. I was shocked, but happy
for the guy. Shit, he’d never even kissed a girl, and he was
already a junior in high school. I will never forget the girl’s
name, either: Julie Di Benedetto. After a few weeks of dating her,
he told us that she broke up with him. Not that she wanted to do
it; it’s just that her dad wouldn’t let her date guys until she was
sixteen, so she had to do it. I felt so bad for Paul that I almost
cried in the cafeteria as he told the story.
     
    Believe it or not, a few days later Paul told
us that he met another girl, also at the bus stop on his way home
from school. I will never forget her name, either: Joyce McCormick.
But after they went out a few times, she broke up with him, too.
And for the same reason that Julie Di Benedetto did, because she
had a very protective father.
     
    I knew something was up at that point,
because he’d dated two girls in just a few weeks and nobody had
seen them but him. So I asked Paul what high school Joyce went to
and he told me. Little did he know that I didn’t believe him, and
that I called up the high school asking if they had a student
registered under the name Joyce McCormick. And you know what? They
didn’t. Paul had made the whole story up. There was no Joyce and
there was no Julie. He just wanted to gain respect and sympathy
from his friends, so he lied through his teeth.
     
    Looking back on it now, it’s easy to laugh
about it. But in high school me and my friends pretty much never
let Paul forget it. Every day at lunch time when we all sat
together, we’d crack jokes about it. “Hey, Paul, how’s Julie
doing?” Shit like that. Even the last time we spoke, I think I
mentioned Julie and Joyce to him. But he still doesn’t know that I
got Jeff’s sister’s number at the dance that night. I guess he
thinks I got Maria’s number, since she’s the one I eventually went
out with. Not that I did anything to change his mind.
     
    Even though I had a lot of reasons to make
fun of him, he was a good guy, overall. Despite his obvious
jealousy, he was always