Trout and Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

smelled it. It had a kind of sharp, acid smell and the cream was pale pink.
    “What does it do?”
    “Try it.”
    “Not unless you tell me what will happen.”
    “Like if you put it on your eyebrows, your eyebrows will disappear.”
    “Forever?”
    “Until you wash it off. Here.” He took the tube and squeezed it into his hand and rubbed a little on my forehead. “Go check the mirror in the boys’ room.”
    I got the rest of my books and headed to the boys’ room, Trout on my heels. The bathroom was very bright, but I couldn’t see anything on my forehead when I looked in the mirror, not even the faintest pink.
    “It didn’t work,” I said.
    “Wait.”
    “Now? Don’t we have to go to class?”
    “Just wait and maybe your forehead will disappear. Or maybe you’re just not the invisible kind of kid.”
    So we went to math and I had forgotten the invisible cream by the time my math test was handed back with a fifty-six in red across the top and a note at the bottom from Ms. Becker: “Dear Ben, Do you
ever
do your homework or study for tests?”
    “Ben?” Ms. Becker called out.
    And I was just thinking, Great, now she’s going to call me to the front of the class and tell everyone I got a fifty-six
again
and didn’t try and wasn’t smart, so I looked up at her and her face turned something like purple. She’s old, and purple isn’t a good color for her.
    “What?” I said, forgetting to be polite. And what good would it have done anyway?
    “What is on your forehead?”
    I looked over, and Trout had an expression of boredom on his face.
    “I don’t know,” I said.
    “Certainly you know. You put it there to be amusing, I’m sure, and distract the class.”
    I reached up and touched my forehead. It was kind of hot and burning, but I hadn’t noticed. By this time the class had jumped out of their seats in spite of Ms. Becker and run up to the front of the class to look at me. Ms. Becker asked everyone to sit down, which they didn’t, and to stop laughing, which they didn’t, and I was sent to Mr. O’Dell’s office.
    I went. In fact, I was glad to get away from Ms. Becker and have a chance to tear up my math test and toss it in the trash in the boys’ room, where I went first to check what had happened to my forehead.
    Across my forehead, in bright red letters, was written ASS.

    “So thanks a lot,” I said to Trout.
    “I’m really sorry,” Trout said sweetly. “I didn’t know she’d be so mean. What happened in the principal’s office?”
    “I washed it off before I got to the principal’s office and told him my sister’s boyfriend had given me some magic cream and I used it on my forehead without knowing what it would do and how stupid that was and how sorry I was,” I said. “That kind of stuff. I go to Mr. O’Dell’s office so much I’ve learned how to suck up and he’s pretty dumb.”
    “Are we still going to be best friends?”
    “We were never going to be best friends,” I said. We were headed out of the building on our way to meet Meg, which had been my plan before Trout arrived at Stockton Elementary.
    “Then friends?”
    “Maybe,” I said. But already Trout was the most interesting boy I’d met since I came to Stockton when I was five years old, so it was pretty much sealed that we were going to be friends.
    Usually Meg walks home from the high school by Main Street, stopping at the pharmacy to see our mother, who’ll be standing behind the counter mixing up pills, and sometimes at The Grub, where the high school kids go afterschool to smoke and drink Coke floats and hang out and play music. Often I go to The Grub with Meg as sort of a pet. That’s how her friends think of me. Toy baby brother. Pet brother. I don’t mind it.
    Max is always outside The Grub leaning against the wall of the brick building, listening to the music coming through the window, smoking with some of his friends.
    So on Trout’s first day of school I took him to The Grub with me. I