Trout and Me Read Online Free PDF

really didn’t have a choice. Already he was attached. I couldn’t strip myself away.
    “Are we going to your house?” he asked as we headed down the front steps of the school.
    “We’re meeting my older sister at a place called The Grub,” I said.
    “Do you drink?” Trout asked, falling in step with me.
    “Nope.”
    “Do they serve beer at The Grub?”
    “Just hamburgers, Cokes, that sort of thing,” I told him. “The kids who go are underage. You know. They can’t buy alcohol.”
    He seemed disappointed.
    He was walking along beside me, his hands slipped into the pockets of his jeans, the sleeves of his sweatshirt rolled up, when he asked me about pills.
    “Pills?”
    “Yeah, pills.”
    “You mean like drugs?”
    “Yeah, drugs. But not street drugs. These are the kinds of drugs you get from the doctor for dumb and dumber kids who’re in trouble in school.”
    “Well, I should be taking those pills,” I said, walking down Main Street in the direction of The Grub. “I’m always in trouble.”
    “For bad grades?”
    “Bad grades, bad behavior, you name it.”
    “I get in a lot of trouble too,” Trout said.
    I wasn’t surprised. Anyone could tell that Trout was that kind of kid.
    “I’m supposed to take Ritalin. That’s what the doctor in Kansas gave me to take in third grade,” he said. “You know about Ritalin?”
    “I’ve heard of it.”
    “Well, it’s a pill.”
    I knew all about Ritalin. When I was told I had learning disabilities, Mr. O’Dell told my parents that
everyone
thought I should take Ritalin and my mother said no, I would not be taking Ritalin or anything else. She was a pharmacist and knew all about pills and I was her son and she would be making her own decisions about me. My mom can’t be pushed around, especially about her kids.
    “So what’s Ritalin?” I had asked my mom on the drive home from O’Dell’s office.
    “Medicine to make you calm down so you can study,” my mother said. “And that’s something you’re going to learn how to do without medicine.”
    The subject of Ritalin came up again in fifth grade and my mom hadn’t changed her mind. But so far, even now, I haven’t learned how to calm down and study. At least according to my teachers.
    “I’m supposed to take Ritalin so I can concentrate in school, whatever that means,” Trout said. “The teachers in Kansas said I had to take the stuff because I was a ‘cutup’ with learning disabilities.”
    “Learning disabilities?” My heart leapt up.
    “Yeah. Dyslexia,” Trout said. “You know dyslexia?”
    “I’ve heard of it.”
    I knew dyslexia very well. It’s one of the things that’s supposed to be the matter with me. I reverse my letters and can’t write very quickly and am especially slow on the standardized reading tests, which I hate.
    “How did the teachers know you had learning disabilities?” I asked.
    I wasn’t planning to tell Trout about my own learning disabilities, but I had this sudden feeling of lightness just to know that he had the same troubles I do. Sometimes at Stockton Elementary, I’ve felt completely alone, even by the time I got to fifth grade and my lisp had almost disappeared.
    “I couldn’t read,” he said. “I still can’t, and don’t even want to read most of the time, since school is so boring. But that’s why they gave me Ritalin, so I could learn to read.”
    “Does it help?”
    “Who knows?” Trout shrugged. “I throw the pills in the toilet.”
    I laughed. I couldn’t help myself.
    “And what does your father say about that?”
    He looked at me with exasperation.
    “He doesn’t know, of course. If he knew, he’d tie me to a chair and stick the pills down my throat.” He opened his mouth, gagging, stuck his finger down his throat. “Like that,” he said.
    We turned into The Grub. I knew Trout was impressed when I just breezed past the high school boys leaning, as they always did, against the brick building. I high-fived Max, opened