My Brother's Keeper Read Online Free PDF Page B

dork.”
    And instead of being mad at him like I planned on, I’m actually sort of grateful to him for at least doing a big brotherly kind of thing.
    Which confuses me more than trying to walk to the bus stop with my hat pulled down so far I can hardly see where I’m going.
    Which means I’m a couple steps behind Jake when a white car pulls up with Andy Timmons and his goatee in the driver’s seat. I peek out from under the brim of my hat and watch as Jake gets in and leaves me standing there on the sidewalk looking like a dork after all.
    T hat day at the end of lunch—after everybody except the janitor and a couple of chess geeks have left the cafeteria—I pull the American Express bill out of my back pocket and throw it into a trash can, where it lands on top of somebody’s leftover meat loaf. Where hopefully it’ll get mixed in with all the crusts from kids’peanut butter sandwiches and the fruit that mothers always pack but which nobody ever eats and all the pencil shavings and old test papers from the school, and get carted away to the dump, where it’ll get buried underneath a bunch of flat tires and broken toilet seats. Which won’t solve the problem of my mom having an American Express bill that is never going to make it out of the have-to-wait pile, but which at least is something.
    As soon as the bell rings, I head down the hall to meet Arthur at his locker so we can walk to tryouts together. Before I even get there, I can see him because of his flaming red hair. Even though it’s probably the worst possible hair a person can have—except for prematurely gray hair—he seems to like what he calls his “defining feature,” which sounds like something his mom made up to make him feel better about it.
    He’s standing in front of his locker with all his books and papers and old sweatshirts and sneakers and candy bar wrappers dumped out on the floor.
    “I can’t find my permission slip,” he says.
    I feel for mine in my back pocket.
    “You get yours signed?” he says.
    “Yup,” I say, which isn’t technically a lie. It’s signed. By me.
    I lift up one of his old sweatshirts, which I’m pretty sure he’s been dragging around from one locker to another since fourth grade, and hunt for the permission slip. Arthur asks if I want anything to eat. His dad has an office job and his mom is a nurse, so he always has money for after-school junk food.
    “Whadya have today?” I say.
    “What do I have?” He gives me a maniac grin. “Gonorrhea.”
    Arthur has pretty much the same sense of humor as Eli. He thinks any sentences containing words for private bodily parts or private bodily functions or words not generally used outside the confines of Human Sexuality class are hysterical. Lately, he’s especially fond of otherwise normal words such as but and screw and nut. All of which is highly embarrassing for me, especially the gonorrhea line, which is a reference to the fact that up until Human Sexuality class I thought gonorrhea was an intestinal problem, like diarrhea, something I was stupid enough to share with Arthur.
    What he actually has is a Butterfinger, a Snickers, a pack of Little Debbies, and some Rolos. I’m pretty hungry, having not eaten the beef goulash on account of it maybe having Mad Cow disease; so I go for the Little Debbies.
    “You got your new stuff?” he says, pawing through a bunch of crumpled-up papers. “It says on the form that we have to buy our own cleats.”
    I don’t say anything; I hold his biology book up and shake out all the papers inside.
    “I got new cleats last night,” he says. “And a Barry Bonds batting glove.”
    Arthur’s always getting new stuff. He has Nintendo, Game Cube, and PS2.
    “And a … you know.” He points to his crotch.
    I don’t get it.
    “A nut cup.” He says this in a fake whisper which is actually pretty loud and which is obviously heard by a bunch of girls walking by, including Martha MacDowell, who up until Arthur mentioned the