Shoebag Returns Read Online Free PDF

cares about the clubs in this school, anyway? I’m not angry about any stupid clubs!”
    “But your play,” Stanley persisted, “is about a stupid club.”
    “Curtain going up!” said Josephine.
    “Meow!”
    “No catcalls, or you have to leave!” said Josephine.
    “I didn’t meow,” Stanley said.
    “Someone did,” said Josephine.
    “Meow!”
    The large yellow cat with slanted green eyes walked toward the royal blue rug, and sat down in the spotlight beside the googly-eyed doll, Huntsville.
    “How did he get here?” Josephine said.
    “A cat! I’ve always wanted a cat!” Stanley said. He jumped off the bed, went across, and knelt down by him.
    “If you always wanted one, how come you never had one?”
    “They ruin good furniture my mother says, and my father says they get hair all over good clothes.”
    The cat squeezed his eyes shut in ecstasy as Stanley petted him.
    “Clear the stage!” said Josephine. But she could not resist the cat, either. (She could not resist any animal, any bug, any creature great or small.) She knelt down beside Stanley and petted the cat, as well.
    “Do you want to be in a play?” she asked the cat.
    “You’d better not smash his head against the wall.”
    “I wouldn’t,” she said. “I hate all cruelty. That’s why I said you were right in Mr. Longo’s class.”
    “You took it back,” Stanley said.
    “I didn’t take it back. I just wormed my way out of it. Nice kitty. Nice kitty.”
    “A yellow cat!” Stanley said. “I’ve never seen a yellow cat! Only white ones, or black ones, or Siamese.”
    “We should name him Butter,” Josephine said. “He’s the color of butter, and that butter ball is what got us grounded.”
    “Hello, Butter,” Stanley said to the cat. “Where do you live?”
    “I think he belongs to Cook,” said Josephine. “They say the kitchen has rats!”
    “Rats in the kitchen!” Stanley said. “How can we eat the food?”
    “They’re not in the food. They’re just in the kitchen.”
    “There are no rats at Castle Sweet!”
    “But you’re not at Castle Sweet now,” said Josephine. “You’re in this cruel boarding school where the Betters strut around in their red socks wearing their Better buttons.”
    “I saw a roach in my room, too,” said Stanley. He said nothing about the voice he heard after he saw the roach.
    “Roaches don’t bother me,” said Josephine Jiminez. She leaned over and nuzzled the yellow cat. “I would rather have them around than certain people and their secret club! Everything I need is right in this room. The Black Mask Theater, the Cast of Characters, you and me, and now Butter! Who cares about anything else?”
    But her voice had a very needy sound. And Stanley Sweetsong was thinking that there he was in a dark room on a sunny day with a ditzy girl everyone called the “Doll Smasher.” At Castle Sweet he would have been out on the great green lawn with a croquet mallet, batting balls through the wicket.

Eleven
    I T WAS LATE ON a Wednesday night, pitch-dark except for a slice of orange moon.
    Inside the Macintosh, all the roaches were fast asleep but one.
    He was perched at the door of the disc drive, listening for any sound besides the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen, and the water filter in the swimming pool.
    Then Shoebag hopped down to the keyboard.
    He drew a deep breath, let it out, and spoke the roach formula Gregor Samsa had taught him.
    “Flit, flutter, quiver, quaver, totter, stagger, tumble, warble, wobble, wiggle, swing, and sway.”
    You would think that when a roach turned into a tiny person there would be a sound of some kind, a pop or a snap, or a poof with a puff of smoke.
    But there was none of that.
    As soon as Shoebag said the words he felt his shell lift, his legs dissolve, his cerci vanish, and his antennae float off.
    His two human eyes saw himself become, quite soundlessly, a small, very naked, young boy.
    Instantly, he covered his private parts with his small