Number Two Read Online Free PDF Page A

Dopebusters. Finally, we had a purpose for our recess and noon-hour breaks.
    My friend Robin Bobocel was an only child—a rarity in a small prairie town where families usually had at least two children since so many people lived on farms and acreages, and boredom was sure to cause an isolated child to drive their parents absolutely crazy.Robin was different. Robin was an accident. I know this because he would remind us about it all the time. His parents had obviously told him at a ridiculously young age, but Robin had such an easygoing disposition that nothing ever seemed to bother him—not even his parents informing him that his entire presence on our planet was simply the result of too much red wine and too little caution with birth control. Robin was as relaxed and happy a kid as I ever met. He had clearly never wanted for anything. A visit to his “playroom” next to his bedroom at his family’s house just a few kilometres outside of town was like a visit to the nearest Toys “R” Us.
    Robin had the latest of everything and was also one of the first kids I knew with satellite television. He used to come to school and regale us with exciting tales of MTV beamed in from the United States, while we were stuck with plain old MuchMusic in Canada. Years later he would be one of the only students to actually receive a new car for his sixteenth birthday, a forest green Jeep YJ that made our jaws drop as he casually pulled up to school one day cranking the beats of Sir Mix-a-Lot.
    Back in fifth grade, though, Robin was a valuable member of the Dopebusters team, because in addition to the toys and the satellite dish and the trampoline in his expansive backyard, Robin was also the only one of us who had his own camera.
    After several recess breaks spent performing covert surveillance on the Leather Jacket Gang, we decided we needed actual photographic evidence to bring these “perps” to justice. No way were we going to stand by and simply spy on these rule-breaking drug fiends; we needed to teach them and their kind a lesson—that drugs of any kind would not be tolerated in our school.
    During one particularly fruitful spying session, we hung around long enough to watch the Leather Jacket Gang leave early beforethe bell rang, giving us the opportunity to check for evidence left behind in the little forest clearing where they sat around, laughing at their own jokes—a little too hard for our liking. Once the jacket squad had cleared out, we carefully snuck down to the clearing, and it was there that my fellow Dopebuster, Kevin Meyer, found . . . wait for it . . . an empty container of cough syrup! The boys were drinking sizzurp years before it was cool with hip hop stars and Justin Bieber. Taking out one of the Glad sandwich bags I had stuffed in my jacket pocket that morning while my mom was preparing my lunch, I carefully scooped up the empty cough syrup container to be stored back in my cubbyhole for safe keeping, not taking into account that if our teachers or principals actually considered drinking cough syrup some sort of crime, then I was basically putting the evidence in my own possession. It was like someone finding a murder weapon and putting their fingerprints all over it. Columbo I was not. I was not even Angela Lansbury from Murder She Wrote .
    But even with the cough syrup bottle, we still felt we needed photographic evidence. So the next day, Robin, Kevin, and I, plus the other idiots we’d convinced to join us in this ridiculous venture, all snuck into the trees near the school at lunch hour and resumed our stakeout. The goal was simple: Get a picture of these ne’er-do-wells smoking, drinking, or ingesting actual drugs so we could take it to our teacher, Mr. Galonka, and rid our once clean and serene school of the scourge of drugs forever. We watched the clock impatiently, thirsting for justice, knowing that nothing was going to stand in our way of putting these