Saturday Boy Read Online Free PDF Page B

My heart was pounding so loud I was pretty sure Budgie could hear it.
    â€œYou suck, Lamb!” he said.
    â€œRack of lamb!” said Barely O’Donahue. “Ram-a-lamb-a-ding-dong!”
    I kept going. I’d stopped thinking about it. I was just climbing—grabbing one branch after another, hoisting, pulling myself higher into the tree. I kept an eye out for Budgie’s name even though the higher I got, the more I believed it wasn’t there.
    I got to a place where I could balance pretty good and stopped to catch my breath. My hands hurt. They were dirty and shaky and hard to open. I didn’t know how high up I was but I couldn’t see Budgie anymore because there were too many leaves in the way. Come to think of it, I hadn’t heard him for a while either.
    I did hear something though. It sounded like bus engines.
    â€œBudgie,” I shouted down, “do you hear the bus?”
    Mom was working a late shift today, which meant my aunt Josie would be at my house, and since her car was still getting fixed it meant if I missed the bus I would have no way of getting home. I couldn’t miss the bus. I just couldn’t.
    â€œBudgie?”
    My stomach dropped. Budgie wasn’t there anymore, I just knew it.
    And if Budgie wasn’t there, then Barely O’Donahue and the other kids weren’t there either. They were probably in line for the bus already. They might even be
on
the bus. I pictured them sitting in the way back, yucking it up, giving each other high-fives for ditching me.
    They were a clever bunch for sure.
    I climbed down as fast as I could. My feet slipped on the branches and some of them bent and broke but I hung on. My shirt ripped. Branches poked at me. Leaves swirled around me. My foot got stuck and I unstuck it. I could feel something in my hair—leaves or twigs maybe—and something itching me on my back. I hoped it wasn’t spiders. When I thought I was close enough to the ground to not get hurt, I took a deep breath and flung myself outward.
    As I fell through the air I heard my dad’s voice, recalling the words of his commanding officer from a story he told me about his first day of jump school.
    â€œLanding is easy. All’s you need to remember are the following three words in the following order.” I pictured my dad’s CO wearing mirrored sunglasses and chewing on a cigar, voice raspy from a lifetime of barking orders. “Feet. Ass. Head.”
    I hit the ground pretty hard but in the correct order, little darts of pain shooting up my legs even though I remembered to bend my knees. I grabbed my bag and my jacket, thankful that Budgie hadn’t thought to hide them or, worse, open my bag and scatter everything around. I ran as fast as I could but when I got to the front of the school building the turnaround was empty. The smell of exhaust hung in the air.
    I dropped my stuff and sat down on the curb. How could I be so stupid? All I had to do was make it through the day and get on the bus and go home and I couldn’t even do that. Instead I had let Budgie get to me again. I wished I could go back in time and do the day again only this time when Barely O’Donahue said, “Budgie climbed the tree,” I’d say, “Good for him” or “Get bent” or something—
anything—
other than what I’d actually said. Sometimes I wished I could just take my brain out and put it in a box and bury it.
    I went to wipe my dirty hands on my jeans but they were just as bad if not worse. My shirt was dirty, too. I was scratched in a few places and bleeding. Mom was going to kill me if I ever got home. I could just see Budgie sitting in the back of the bus smiling and thinking he was so clever. Maybe if he smiled wide enough the top of his head would fall off.
    I pictured him on all fours, feeling around for his head and getting all dirty and gross from the bus floor while everyone laughed and pointed at him