The Seventeenth Swap Read Online Free Page B

because she says . . .”
    With difficulty, Eric got him back to the point.
    â€œOh. Well, I already spent my allowance. I could swap you a box kite, though. It’s only got one little tear in it. Or my thunderegg rock. Or a Swiss Army knife with two blades and a screwdriver and bottle opener. One of the blades is broke, but . . . Oh yeah, or I could let you have a T-shirt with Mount St. Helens on it. It says ‘I survived.’ Only washed a couple times. I outgrew it.”
    Eric absorbed this information in doubtful silence.
    â€œWell? Is it a deal?” Steve asked him anxiously.
    â€œI’ll let you know.” Eric hung up, found a pencil and his ring binder, turned it upside down and wrote on the back page:
    THINGS PEOPLE WILL SWAP
    1.  Triangle stamp
    2.  Corgi cars
    3.  S. A. knife (one blade broke)
    4.  Thunderegg rock
    5.  Box kite (small tear)
    6.  Mt. St. H. T-shirt, good cond.
    He studied his list, then on the opposite side of the page wrote:
    THINGS PEOPLE WANT
    1.  Triangle stamp
    2.  Corgi cars (esp. Jag. & Mov. van)
    After some thought, he added to the second list:
    3.  Cocktail picks
    4.  Cigar boxes
    5.  Smells (?)
    That last one didn’t really count. What else? He dimly remembered Angel yakking on and on about somebody being crazy about little china dogs. But was it her sister or her aunt from New York, or her sister’s friend’s boyfriend, or . . . Now he wished he’d listened. He’d better let her catch him tomorrow, and see if she’d say it all again. Meanwhile . . .
    â€œHomework done already?” Dad asked as he came in wearing his robe and slippers, and dropped into his TV-watching chair.
    â€œJust about to start,” Eric told him, and turned his ring binder right side up.
    He’d already made a start, of sorts, on what he was beginning to think of as The Great Double Multiple Swap. Tomorrow he’d better get busy with that research.

3
Research
    Eric learned a lot the next day about finding out what you want to know without quite knowing what it is you want to find out.
    He filled all the cracks of the forenoon with asking questions of people—sometimes direct ones, like “If you could have anything you wanted for under a dollar, what would it be?”, sometimes leading ones like “Would you rather have a Swiss Army knife with one blade broken instead of your little one?”
    By lunchtime he was just making random remarks to see what came of them, and discovering that a great deal did. “Chris Donaldson’s grandpa’s got about a hundred old license plates nailed up in his garage,” he told Melinda Jones, who retorted, “That’s nothing, my grandpa’s got his garage full of old radios he’s rebuilding—he has to keep his car in the street.” Later when he happened to mention to Ms. Larkin, the school librarian, that his dad’s old copy of the Just-So Stories didn’t have colored pictures like the library’s, she exclaimed, “I’ll bet his has Kipling’s own black-and-whitedrawings! Oh, what I’d give for a good copy of that edition!”
    By the time Eric started home from school he’d added several items to both his lists and was counting on Angel to add some more. It was a letdown to spot her trotting off in the opposite direction, jabbering ninety-to-nothing at Debbie Clark as they both headed for Debbie’s mother’s car and, presumably, Debbie’s fancy house down beside the lake. After a little thought, Eric changed his own direction, crossed at the light, and started up Lake Street toward the stores. At least it wasn’t raining, though the day was overcast and chilly.
    A couple of blocks along, nearly opposite Mulvaney’s Supermarket where Eric’s dad worked, was Mr. Lee’s little hole-in-the-wall business, squeezed between a copy shop and a sandwich bar