Stick Read Online Free Page A

cigarettes and told his son how great he was going to be. Ricky was also a year older than all the other boys in eighth grade. Mr. Dostal held him back just so he would be bigger and stronger for high school football. Personally, I’d rather have to go to the doctor for jerking off too much than spend an extra year in junior high. We always hated each other, so all I could do was ignore him and pretend he wasn’t there.
    It didn’t work.
    When he turned away from the pisser, he noticed I’d been standing a few feet away from him.
    Ricky said, “Hey,
    retard. How’s the head wound?”
    What could I do?
    You can’t do or say anything when you’re standing there holding your dick.
    Ricky reached out and swiped the beanie from my head.
    â€œYou sonofabitch!” I hurriedly zipped up and turned toward him. I remember that I was thinking about what Emily had said to me earlier—about how I needed to learn to fight back.
    But I wasn’t like that.
    Ricky shoved me and I spun back and nearly fell into the urinal.
    It was one of those ones that ran along the length of the wall, open, with no dividers, about chest high.
    â€œWhat’d you say about my mom,       freak?”
    There’s always piss all over the floor in school gym restrooms.
    Ricky flipped my hat down into the piss in the bottom of the urinal. Then he smiled at me and stared straight into my eyes.
    I hated it when people stared at me.
    I figured I was going to get hit.
    I looked down at my feet.
    â€œIsn’t that          your beanie there      in the piss drain, Stick?”
    I didn’t answer him.
    That’s when Bosten came in, holding a Coke. I didn’t hear him.
    Neither did Ricky, I guess.
    â€œI think you should put it on, Stick. You need             to cover that shit on your head,” Ricky said.
    I looked up. I wasn’t scared of him.
    Bosten casually set his Coke down on the sink behind Ricky and cleared his throat. And just when Ricky Dostal turned his face, Bosten punched him so hard, just below the eye, that I could feel the whack! of my brother’s fist vibrating up through the yellowed restroom floor.
    Ricky spun back toward me so fast that droplets of his blood splashed onto the tiles above the chrome water pipe that dripped a continuous flow all along the length of the wall’s open urinal.
    He was out before he hit the ground, completely unconscious, lying on his side with his face in the piss on the floor. There was a dark red gash that arced all the way across Ricky’s cheekbone, and blood splashed everywhere across the floor, over Ricky’s gray face.
    It almost looked like somebody had been murdered in there.
    Bosten didn’t say a thing to me. He just took a sip through the straw in his Coke, set it back down on the sink, then stepped over Ricky, went to the end of the urinal, and peed.
    I stood over Ricky, watching the pool of blood run through the grooves between the tiles on the floor, mixing with urine, finding its way, eventually, into the bottom of the piss trough.
    â€œWant some?” Bosten offered me his Coke.
    I was thirsty.
    Ricky moaned, began to roll over. He was a mess, soaked in piss and blood.
    â€œWait a second,” Bosten said. “Here.”
    Then he took off his cap and put it on my head.
    â€œAs long           as I live, Stick, no one’s ever going to do that               to you again.”
    During the game, as we sat beside Mrs. Buckley, who didn’t even notice that I was wearing my brother’s ball cap, we saw the dean of students walking across the floor, scanning the bleachers for me and Bosten.
    So he leaned over to me and whispered, “Come on, Stick. We might as well go turn ourselves in.”
    And that’s how Bosten and I got