The Big One-Oh Read Online Free Page B

face and over his glasses. He had on thick gloves and, from hand to hand, he was tossing a test tube that was spitting fire and sparks. He kept yelling, “Hot! Hot! Hot!” as he ran across the lawn to an old concrete birdbath that was filled up with green scummy rainwater. He tossed the tube into the water and watched as the flames sputtered and the burning tube sank. Only then did he stop yelling, “Hot! Hot! Hot!”
    He took off his gloves and wiped his forehead, like, “Whew! That was a close one!” When he looked around to make sure that nobody had seen his weirdness, I ducked behind Lorena’s curtain, so he didn’t see me on his way back into his house.
    Mom was right, I thought. What an odd man.
    Â 
    Â 
    I couldn’t see what was in the bushes that Garry had stuck his head into, but, whatever it was, he was talking to it.
    â€œLet it go! Good boy! Let it go!”
    And as he kept saying that, Garry was rocking back and forth on his knees like he was playing tug-of-war. Only he wasn’t winning.
    â€œAtta boy! Let it go! Who’s a good boy?” he kept on.
    Suddenly there was a thrashing in the underbrush, and Garry fell forward, crashing through branches onto his belly. Then Boing Boing burst from the hedge and ran straight at me with something in his mouth. I couldn’t tell what it was until he dropped it at my feet, and then I jumped .
    Because Boing Boing had brought me a foot. A human foot.
    Only it wasn’t attached to a human!! Where it should have been attached, there was only bone and blood and . . . oh, man! I don’t think you want to hear this.
    I gagged, “GAAAgggghhhh!”
    Suddenly Garry was there, picking up the foot, like, “Oh, yeah, I guess I dropped that.” When he straightened up, I could see that he was wearing the same rubber apron he had on the afternoon he drowned the flaming test tube. Only now, the front of the apron—you’re not gonna believe this—was covered with blood!
    I mean, it looked like blood.
    I didn’t know whether to hurl or scream or gag again. And before I made a choice, Garry spoke:
    â€œYour dog . . . he, uh . . . he found . . . ,” Garry stammered as he held up the foot. “And then he . . . uh, he . . .” And that’s when he chomped down on the foot! It smooshed like a kitchen sponge.
    I was about ready to pass out.
    Garry released the foot from his teeth. “Then your dog . . . he . . .” Garry made little moves with his hands, like we were playing charades and he was trying to get me to say, “ran away.”
    It was while he was re-creating Boing Boing’s kidnapping of the foot that Garry finally realized I was staring at it in his hand.
    â€œOh!” he yelped. “This . . . it’s only . . . ,” and, as he spoke, he squeezed the foot into a little ball and closed his hand around it. When he opened his fist, the foot sprang back into shape.
    â€œSee? Poof! Squishy.” And he bit it again. “No pain!”
    My head was throbbing with the realization of what a total wacko we had living next door.
    Then Garry announced, “Okay!” turned and went back across the lawn and into his house, brushing grass and leaves and dirt off his rubber foot.
    Now, maybe I have my little peculiarities.
    And maybe I don’t have any friends.
    But, man, oh, man, I thought, at least I’m not a nutjob like my neighbor Garry.

6
    I wasn’t sure whether I should tell Mom the story about Garry and his squishy foot, but, by the time she got home that day, I had something else more important to tell her.
    Something she wasn’t going to like.
    Mom had invited Vince to dinner that night. After all the times they had gone out together, it was the first time that Vince was coming to our house, so Mom asked me to cook something “special but not spicy.”
    And she asked Lorena to please be sure to be home. Mom didn’t even say,