The Scar Boys Read Online Free PDF Page A

parents that I wasn’t a total freak, at least not anymore. Not only did I have a friend, I had
this
friend.
    My mom shot me the occasional look throughout the night, making sure I was doing okay, like she always did.
    I’d actually started to zone out when something Johnny was saying caught my attention.
    “… excited that Harry’s going to be joining us for trick-or-treating on Halloween.”
    What? Did he just say I’m going trick-or-treating?
    My parents, who were well versed in my views on Halloween—mostly from my annual October 31 sob fest—looked at each other and then at me, and then back at each other. After a beat, they both started talking at once, falling over each other at how happy they were to hear the news.
    “Wonderful,” said my mom.
    “Best thing for him,” my dad said to Johnny like I wasn’t even there.
    When the celebration subsided, all three of them looked at me.
    “Great,” I said weakly. Johnny’s face was all smirk.
    After dinner was over, after Johnny helped clear and wash the dishes, after the four of us watched
Laverne and Shirley
together, it was time for Johnny to go home.
    As I watched both my parents hug him goodnight, I have to admit that I felt a pang of jealousy.
This is what it must feel like to be normal
, I thought.
    I walked out of the house with Johnny. As soon as the front door closed behind us, he gave me a high five.
    “Awesome, Harry,” he said. “Trust me, they’re going to let you stay out as long as you want on Halloween.” He walked down the street toward his house, adding, “See you at school tomorrow” as he went.
    Halloween. I had told Johnny “no” about Halloween because I really wanted to stay home. The thought of being out with other kids made me physically nauseous. But thanks to his stunt with my parents, I was trapped.
    When I look back now, I see that this was the beginning of what would become a well-established pattern of Johnny deciding and me doing.
    As I went back up the steps to my house I overheard my parents’ muffled voices on the other side of the door.
    “What a fine young man,” my father was saying.
    “I’ll say,” my mother offered. “The two of them are lucky to have found one another.”
    “The two of them?” my dad answered. “Let’s call a spade a spade, Ruth, Harry’s the lucky one here.”
    “Ben, hush, he’ll hear you.”
    I waited another minute until I heard them take their conversation into the kitchen, and snuck back inside. I pretended not to have heard anything, said goodnight, and went straight to bed.

HELLO, I LOVE YOU
    (written by John Densmore, Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek, and Jim Morrison, and performed by The Doors)
    I arrived at Johnny’s house on Halloween night 1981 decked out in my dad’s tattered cotton trousers, faded button-down shirt, threadbare suit jacket, and old fedora. I was sporting the costume of choice for discriminating suburbanite teens: I was a bum. I’d even burnt a piece of cork and smeared it all over my cheeks, nose, and chin.
    Everyone was already outside when I got there. They were all dressed exactly like me and all holding pillowcase sacks filled with eggs and shaving cream, ready to battle each other, mailboxes, cars, or anything else that got in our way. We looked like a pack of short, skinny 1940s hobos.
    I’d expected to find Johnny and a few boys I knew from school. Instead, it was Johnny and a whole lot of kids I didn’t know, including a bunch of girls from the Our Lady of the Perpetual Who-Can-Remember-the-Name Catholic School.
    Girls.
    Catholic school girls!
    “Harry, I want you to meet someone.”
    I froze.
    “This is Gabrielle Privat.”
    My tongue tied itself in a neat little knot and a bowling ball dropped from my esophagus to my stomach. My fingertips and toes went numb.
    “Harry?” Johnny asked. I finally managed to mutter a sheepish hello back, though I said it more to my shoes than to Gabrielle’s face.
    Right from the start, I was smitten