Me and Fat Glenda Read Online Free

Broadway, and a whopping big, neon-lit shopping center called the Havenhurst Shoppers Mall.
    We were grinding past a spread-out new ranch house with manicured grass and a red-and-white paintedjockey on the lawn when a girl came running down the driveway, all the time yelling over her shoulder, “Hey Ma, the garbage man!”
    Only Drew and I were in the truck that day. Inez had gone bicycling to a patch of woods on the north edge of the campus to hunt for mushrooms.
    â€œStep on it,” I said to Pop. “It’s garbage this time for sure. Judging from the size of that kid, they eat a lot in that house.”
    Because this girl was fat. And when I say fat, I don’t mean fat . I mean FAT.
    â€œHey wait, mister,” the fat girl yelled, puffing her way toward us like a steam engine. “Please wait.” And to my surprise, Drew began slowing to a stop. Not because of her, but because just ahead of us at the corner of the street, half hidden by trees, sat an old silvery gray wooden house in the middle of a weed-grown yard and surrounded by a fence with a lot of the pickets missing. And nailed to the fence was a big, tired-looking sign that said T HIS PROPERTY FOR SALE OR RENT : I NQUIRE C ALVIN C REASEY , 108 B ROADWAY , H AVENHURST .
    By now the fat girl was peering up into the cab of the truck, her cheeks and chin still shaking like jelly from that exhausting run down the driveway and along the street to the truck, maybe a whole twelve yards.
    â€œGee thanks for waiting, mister,” she gasped up at Drew. “My mother’ll be out in a minute. See, we missedthe pickup yesterday and our Dispose-all’s on the blink.”
    â€œForget it,” I said, leaning over Pop’s shoulder to save him the trouble for once. “We don’t take garbage.”
    â€œYou don’t?” She looked pretty mad. Her hair, which was blonde and crinkly, seemed to stand up on end and her eyes, which were the same light hazel color as the freckles all over her cheeks, seemed to turn about three shades darker. She wasn’t bad-looking and I figured she must have been just about my age—eleven, or maybe twelve. But as I said before, was she ever FAT.
    â€œThen what are you riding around in a garbage truck for?” she wanted to know.
    â€œThat’s our business,” Drew snapped. He was getting tired of explanations, and what with school opening for me in just one week and classes starting at the college very soon after, the whole thing was getting to be a drag.
    â€œIt’s a long story,” I said apologetically.
    â€œListen,” Drew said wearily to the fat girl. “What can you tell us about that house, the one there on the corner with the F OR R ENT sign?”
    She followed Drew’s gaze. “That house. Oh, that’s the old Creasey place. Isn’t it awful? No one lives there now. In fact there’s a neighborhood committee to get it condemned and torn down. My mother’s the chairman,” she added proudly.
    â€œWell congratulations and all that,” Pop said.
    â€œBut how can we get a look at it? I mean now.Without going back to Broadway and hunting down this Mr. Creasey.”
    The fat girl looked at Drew and then slyly shifted her eyes to me. “Well, it’s locked—I guess . . . I mean, it’s still private property. But if someone could crawl through a window. Well, of course, I couldn’t—uh, that is, I wouldn’t. But sometimes some of the neighborhood kids do, the smaller kids, that is. . .”
    It took only a few minutes for me to crawl through the living-room window, walk across the creaky dusty floorboards of the big empty living room, and open the front door to Drew and the girl.
    â€œWhat’s it like, baby? Okay?” Pop brushed past me eagerly. He had a sense for these things—and besides he’d already seen the big yard that surrounded the place. I guess he knew that this was going to