Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend Read Online Free PDF

there!’
    I don’t know what makes me say it. I’m surprised by the words as they come out of my mouth. It’s not a great idea. It’s not smart or even original. It’s just the only thing left to do. Max must fight or he will be bowled.
    Tommy’s head and shoulders are now under the stall and I can see that he is about to pull his hips and legs under in one quick movement, and then he will be inside the stall with Max, standing over his small, shaking body, ready to hurt him. Ready to bowl him.
    I stand like a dummy outside the stall. Part of me wants to go in, to stand by my friend, but Max does not like it when people see him naked or pooping. I am as stuck as Max has ever been.
    Then there is another scream, and this time it’s not Max. This time it is Tommy who screams. It’s not Max’s terrified, locked-up scream. It’s a different kind of scream. A more knowing scream. Not panicked or frightened, really, but the scream of someone who can’t believe what has just happened. As he screams, Tommy starts to say something and he tries to stand up, forgetting the door above him, and he slams his back into the bottom of the door, causing him to scream again, this time in pain. Then the door flies open and Max is standing there, pants nearly pulled up but not buttoned or zipped, his legs straddling Tommy’s head.
    ‘Run!’ I shout and he does, stepping on Tommy’s hand, causing Tommy to scream again. Max runs past me, yanking his pants up the rest of the way, and then he is out the door. I follow. Instead of turning left toward his classroom, he turns right, buttoning and zipping his pants without stopping.
    ‘Where are you going?’
    ‘I still need a bathroom,’ he says. ‘Maybe the nurse’s bathroom is clean now.’
    ‘What happened to Tommy?’ I ask. ‘What did you do?’
    ‘I pooped on his head,’ Max says.
    ‘You pooped with someone else in the bathroom?’ I ask.
    I can’t believe it. The fact that he pooped on Tommy Swinden’s head is unbelievable, but the fact that he managed a poop in the presence of another human person is even more amazing.
    ‘Just a little one,’ Max says. ‘I was almost finished when he came in.’ He takes a few more steps down the hall before adding, ‘I pooped this morning, so this was a lot less poop this time. Remember? It was a bonus poop.’

CHAPTER 7
     
    Max is worried that Tommy will tell on him the same way that he told on Tommy about the Swiss Army knife. But I know that he won’t. No kid wants his friends or even his teachers to know that he was pooped on. Tommy will want to kill Max now. Actually kill him. Make his heart stop beating and whatever else it takes to kill a human person.
    But we’ll worry about that day when it comes.
    Max can live with the fear of death just as long as he doesn’t get in trouble for pooping on Tommy Swinden’s head. Kids are afraid of dying all the time, so for Max, being afraid that Tommy Swinden might choke him to death or punch him in the nose is normal. But kids don’t get suspended from school for pooping on the head of a fifth grader. That would happen only in a broken world.
    I tell Max not to worry about getting in trouble. He only half believes me, but that’s enough for him to stay unstuck.
    Besides, Max pooped on Tommy Swinden three days ago and we haven’t seen Tommy since. At first I thought he was absent from school, so I went to Mrs Parenti’s classroom to see if he was there, and he was. Sitting in the first row, closest to the teacher, probably so she can keep an eye on him.
    I’m not sure what Tommy is thinking. Maybe he is so embarrassed about having poop on his head that he has decided to forget about the whole thing. Or maybe he’s so angry that he is planning to torture Max before he kills him. Like the kids who burn ants with magnifying glasses at recess instead of just stepping on them and smearing them on the bottom of their sneakers.
    That’s what Max thinks, and even though I tell him