Strays Read Online Free

round face, he looks like Buddha on his way to the hot spring.
    He says, “I was with Mrs. Rafter when you all were up here before gettin’ situated and she didn’t say nothin’ about no Little Noodle. How about you?”
    I shake my head. “Bob just told me the rules.”
    “This place don’t seem too bad to me. Does it seem bad to you?”
    “I guess not.”
    He slips one flip-flop off, then back on again. “School tomorrow, right?”
    I just nod.
    “Who’s your counselor?”
    “Skinner.”
    “Mine’s Yue.” He can’t help but grin. “Not you. Some Chinese dude.” This time, he takes off the other flip-flop. He pushes it around with his foot like a kid playing tugboat. “What grade are you?”
    “Ten.”
    “Me too. We eat lunch together for a while, all right? Last thing I want to do is end up all by myself at the retards’ table.” He checks his cell phone for the second time in two minutes. “I don’t know nobody. All my friends are in a whole other zip code.”
    “Okay, I guess.”
    “What’s up with this Astin guy? You think he’s big-timin’ us?”
    “Probably.”
    He glances down the empty hall, then leans in. “Lots of times the other kids are in on it, you know what I’m sayin’? They know how it is: maybe right off it’s ‘We’re-so-glad-to-have-you’ and then you drop a dish and they smack you upside the head. Or you wake up at midnight and there’s somebody standin’ by your bed with a candy bar. And they not gonna say ‘Watch out’ ’cause it happened to them and they want it to happen to you too.” He moves a step closer. “We get through tonight, we might be okay. Any kind of weird shit go down, you yell your ass off, all right? And the same for me.” He lets me walk away, then says, “Listen, Mrs. Rafter said your folks bought it. That’s hard.”
    I don’t turn around. “Yeah, thanks.”
    Astin went out after dinner, so he’ll probably come in late and make noise. He’ll want to make sure I know whose room this really is.
    I spend about a minute fussing around with the things I brought. All seven of them. As far as anything weird going on in the night, I’m protected by lions now. They’ve taken over from my mother’s dogs and cats, the ones that used to sleep on my bed when there wasn’t any room on hers.
    Finally I turn out the light. There’s this teacher, Mr. Parker, at my old grade school who goes to Japan every summer to meditate. And every fall he comes back and brags about how simple everything is: one pair of sandals, two robes, one towel. Well, now he’s got nothing on me.
    I sat behind Penny Raybon in Mr. Parker’s class. She was the one who had that stupid party where I got in trouble.
    We played dumb games until Penny’s parents left, then it was time for Seven Minutes of Heaven. Except the girls said I smelled like cat pee, so all I got to do was lead the lucky couples into the bedroom.
    While I waited and watched the clock, I wandered around and looked in drawers and closets. They had so much stuff. I grabbed a letter opener and scratched my initials in their desk.
    In the principal’s office the next day, I said I didn’t know why I did it. My mother walked to the window and cooed to some pigeons, and my father said to the Raybons, “I’ll pay for the desk and I’ll guarantee nothing like this will ever happen again.” I’m surprised he didn’t give them a discount coupon for a spaniel.
    I didn’t even get detention, but Penny made sure nobody ever forgot.
    The house shifts and creaks a little. I hear somebody on the stairs and the television set laughing at itself.
    When Astin opens the door, light cuts across his part of the room. He’s still on his cell phone and acts like he’s alone. “I’m sorry, too,” he says, “but wasn’t it fun making up?” He doesn’t even bother to look at me. “For sure,” he says. “See you tomorrow. Me too. Yeah.”
    I hear his boots drop and his shirt fly off. It’s like he’s