Saturday Boy Read Online Free PDF Page A

but sometimes kids climbed it anyway when no one was looking.
    â€œHe even carved his name on the top branch with a knife!”
    â€œNo he didn’t,” I said.
    â€œYes he did!”
    â€œNo way.”
    â€œYes way,” Barely O’Donahue said. “Curds and way.”
    Then Ms. Dickson told us all to sit down and I tried to listen to what she was saying but I kept thinking about Budgie and the tree and how I didn’t believe any of it because Budgie had about as much natural climbing ability as a walrus no matter what Barely O’Donahue said.
    I looked around at Budgie. He was sitting at his desk looking more puffed up than usual. I bet he hadn’t climbed the tree at all. I bet he was giving Barely O’Donahue candy or cookies just to say he did. I was also pretty sure he didn’t carve his name on any branch. As far as I knew he didn’t even
have
a pocketknife.
    Budgie found me on the monkey bars during recess. Barely O’Donahue and a couple other kids were with him.
    â€œBarely says you don’t believe I climbed the tree,” he said.
    I looked down from the monkey bars at him. Barley seemed even smaller from up there.
    â€œSo?”
    â€œSo
do
you?”
    â€œDo I what?”
    â€œDo you believe I climbed the tree?”
    More kids were coming over. They quit playing tag. They stopped playing four square and crackabout and wall ball. I don’t know why I said what I said next. Maybe it was because Budgie was surrounded by kids who thought he was some kind of hero when he hadn’t done anything except lie to them and that didn’t seem right. Maybe I thought I could get away with it because there were so many people around. Or maybe the words just popped into my head and they came out before I could stop them.
    â€œDude, I don’t believe you could climb
any
tree.”
    Some of the kids laughed including Barely O’Donahue. Budgie didn’t laugh. His face went red instead.
    â€œWhat did you just say?”
    â€œHe said he didn’t believe you could climb any tree,” said Barely O’Donahue.
    â€œI heard him.”
    â€œYou know, because you’re fat.”
    â€œShut up!”
    Now just about everyone was laughing. Budgie’s face got redder—almost purple.
    â€œAre you saying you could do better?” he asked.
    Budgie stood below the monkey bars waiting for me to answer. I looked around at the kids. They were waiting for an answer, too. There was really only one thing I could say so I said it.
    â€œYeah.”
    The kids in the crowd all started talking between each other and Budgie stood there with his arms crossed and a mean grin on his face. My mouth went dry all of a sudden. What if he
hadn’t
made the whole thing up?
    â€œAfter school,” he said. “At the tree.”
    Then he turned around and walked away and Barely O’Donahue and a couple of other kids followed him. The kids who were left walked away, too. They started playing four square and crackabout and wall ball again. I was all alone on top of the monkey bars wondering if I hadn’t just made the biggest mistake of my life.
    * * *
    Normally I couldn’t wait for the day to be over. Normally I’d be counting down the minutes until the bell. Today was not a normal day. Today I actually wished the clock would slow down. Sally passed me a note and I opened it even though I knew I shouldn’t have. At first I thought Budgie’s drawing was of a weasel falling off a burning flagpole, then I realized it wasn’t a burning flagpole at all. It was a tree. And if the burning flagpole was a tree, that meant I was the weasel.
    I wanted to turn around and scream at him that nobody believed he’d climbed the stupid tree anyway and that I didn’t have to prove anything to him or anybody else and that nobody liked him or cared about what he said, including Barely O’Donahue, who probably only hung around