Stranger in Dadland Read Online Free PDF Page A

the bus, or hitch a ride or something.”
    “Is it far?”
    “Everything’s far. But I couldn’t go today anyway. I gotta stick around. Help with the boys.”
    I didn’t know what he meant, but our food came. I ate my second meal of the day and it was only nine-thirty.
    After we ate, we roamed around. Beau wasn’t kidding: There was nothing there. Just the usual video stores and coffee places. But it was less boring because it was all so Californian—that sunlight that’s a whole different color than back home and those weird plants that make our plants seem blah.
    Then Beau suddenly slumped down and nudged me. I followed his eyes, and there on the corner were a bunch ofgirls. I straightened up as tall as I could while Beau, who actually
is
tall, made himself shorter.
    The girls were ignoring us pretty hard and tossing their hair around. Beau dragged his feet, kicking at nothing. Then he horked up a huge mouthful and spit a perfect gob. He was an even more impressive spitter than my friend Theo, and that was saying something.
    One girl shrieked, “Ewwww, gross!” And they all started to giggle like crazy, throwing their hair around even more. Then Beau and I bumped into each other and, like a klutz, I stumbled off the sidewalk. My arm just barely touched a cactus and,
ouch!
, I was cut and bleeding.
    “It’ll probably swell up,” Beau said, darting a glance at the girls. “Harsh, angry vegetable. Has some kind of poison.”
    “Poison?” I asked, wondering if I was allergic. Great, I thought. Now I’ll break out in hives and start to wheeze right in front of everyone. How manly.
    Just then a van pulled up. All the girls piled into it and were whisked away. Beau and I watched them disappear.
    Then I looked at the spiky plant that had stabbed me. It had thorns and a giant asparagus-looking thing poking up in the middle.
    “It’s an Eric plant,” Beau said. “Just being ugly isn’t enough. Gotta be
mean
too.”
    I waited for the swelling to start and my breath to cut off, wondering if I’d have to hightail it to the hospital. But thecut just acted like any old cut, and my inhaler did not have to leave my pocket.
    I pointed at one of those bright pink bushes that climb up walls. “My sister hates these,” I told Beau. “Last summer she told them to shut up and stop screaming at her.”
    Beau nodded. “Pushy plant, bougainvillea.”
    Liz hated all the California plants last year. She’d said they were all show-offs. I think it was because Dad’s girlfriend Bobbie was sort of a show-off and Liz had lumped her and everything else about California into one heap. It hadn’t been our best visit to Dadland. But then, maybe none of them were.

chapter five
    On our way back Beau slapped himself on the forehead, spun on his heels, and said, “I was supposed to get milk.”
    We walked back to a little market we’d passed earlier, and Beau picked out a weird carton. “Soy milk. Untouched by cow,” he said when I asked him what it was.
    The clerk, who had a braided beard, knew Beau by name. Beau told him he’d spent all the milk money on breakfast, and the guy told him he could pay next time. I tried to imagine that happening back home. Impossible. I’d been going to the same store for a hundred years and no one there ever recognized me. Maybe I was just more forgettable than Beau.
    “His Royal Ugliness used to be a stock boy here,” Beau said as we left. “They fired his pimply butt.”
    “Why?” I asked, imagining Eric smacking the customers in the head.
    Beau shrugged. “He can’t be bothered with anything but his music, so he hardly ever showed up. Good thing they don’t think all Lubecks are created equal. They say they’re gonna hire me one of these days, for after school and weekends. That’ll sure beat my job this summer.”
    “What job?” I asked.
    “Baby-sitting,” he said, and for one sickening second I wondered if Beau meant baby-sitting
me!
Could my dad have hired Beau to hang out