Trout and Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

the door of The Grub, and walked in as if I owned the place. A bunch of kids were waving to me, calling me by name. “Benjamin!” they shouted. “Hey, Benjamin.” That’s what Meg calls me. But I’m Ben to my friends.
    “So, buddy,” Max said to Trout as we walked by him. “What’re you doing with that splotch on your chin? Gangrene?”
    “Can’t you tell a question mark when you see one?”
    Max laughed. “A question mark. Very funny. I like that. So you got a tattoo and you’re still a baby.”
    “Right. A tattoo at six, buddy,” Trout said.
    We had Cokes and hung around Meg and her friends, and Trout loved it since Meg’s friend Shoshanna leaned her elbow on his shoulder and ran her fingers through his thin, silky hair. He kind of wiggled, embarrassed at first, and then he got a funny smile spreading all over his face.
    “You are beyond rad,” Shoshanna said, pulling his hair. “What’d you say your name is?”
    “Trout.”
    “Trout. That’s a funny name. What’s your last name?”
    “Trout.” They both laughed then and Shoshanna gave him a huge hug.
    “You are beyond cool, Trout Trout. Beyond heartbreak.”
    “Knock it off, Shoshanna,” Meg said.
    “He loves it,” Shoshanna said. “Don’tcha, Trout Trout?”
    Trout shrugged.
    Later Trout told me that he thought Shoshanna was a maniac. His words. And wasn’t it amazing, he asked me, that a fifteen-year-old girl, even a dumb and crazy one like Shoshanna, thought he was good-looking?
    But later Meg told me that she hated what Shoshanna had done by teasing Trout, since anyone with sense oughtto have noticed that a boy like Trout with a question mark on his chin had problems.
    “What kind of problems do you think he has?” I asked, walking home with her after Trout had left for home. “I mean, he’s got learning disabilities, but so do I.”
    “Who
doesn’t
have learning disabilities?”
    “You don’t,” I said. “You were born smart.”
    Which is when I told her about invisible. Not the invisible cream, but what Trout said about being invisible.
    Meg thinks a lot. That’s something I like about her. She doesn’t say things “off the top of her head,” as my mother would say, meaning that Meg thinks before she speaks. So I knew that she’d have something important to say about invisible.
    We were on Acorn Road, where Ms. Percival lives with her mother, Mrs. Percival, in a dark brown house. I like to walk fast on Acorn, hoping not to see Ms. Percival. I don’t care about seeing her mother.
    Meg was quiet for a while. She and Max had had a fight. Max had asked was she going with him to the Spring Dance and she said no, she wasn’t going to the Spring Dance unless he stopped smoking, and he said, “Eat your heart out, Megsie.” She threw her arm around my shoulder and walked away, telling Max she’d never speak to him again. She’s said that to Max quite a few times andI keep hoping she’ll keep her promise, but she always forgets.
    So it was just the two of us hunched together under her green crocodile umbrella, our bodies bumping into each other in that way I love, as if it’s just us alone in the world together and we’re best friends and we’ll never get any older than we are now.
    “So tell me what Trout said about invisible.”
    I repeated what I remembered.
    “‘If I didn’t have a question mark on my chin,’ Trout said, ‘I’d be invisible. No one would even know that I was here.’” I looked up at her. “Like that.”
    Meg looked thoughtful.
    “I think invisible would be fun,” I said.
    But she was thinking. I knew better than to keep talking while she was thinking, so we just walked along Tabor Lane, down Arch Street behind the movie theater and the ice cream store, across Bark, down the alley that’s behind our apartment building, and in the back door.
    Belinda was sitting on the stoop behind the apartment, pulling double bubble gum in a long string from her mouth. She took it out as we walked by