The Taming of the Drew Read Online Free Page A

me. I won’t die ,” I said, folding the rest of the school paper pages so I couldn’t see any more. “Besides, you can’t believe rumors.”
    “No. You can’t print rumors. At least not in the school paper, you can’t. They call him the Dog for a reason.”
    “How do you know?”
    “His real nickname is the Pit-Bull. Does that sound touchy-feely to you?”
    I took a deep breath. “He’s just another student.”
    “You realize you could get suspended. You even could get expelled . Forever. This is the Dog. His mom is worth a fortune. He’s been in the L.A. Times. Three thousand words. He was even mentioned in the Prep section of Yahoo sports. Everyone wants a piece of him. And no one cares that he’s a jerk. There’s got to be other ways to make money.”
    “Not in chunks like this. If I pull this off, we might get a few more orders. That’s all it would take. If we don’t do something different, we won’t raise enough money in time. The book sales, the monster rummage sales, the clothes swaps, and even the Flash Mob snack sales aren’t cutting it. You know that. You can do the math as well as I can.”
    “You can’t let those trees go, can you?”
    “Tio, babe, if I thought they wouldn’t get a cherry-picker and just drag me out like they did those Berkeley and Santa Cruz students, I’d be sitting high up in them right now.” I could hear the announcer’s squawk drifting on the breeze toward us. Every second we stood here, the game — and my chance to save the trees — came closer to ending. “Listen, we’ve got to go. Give me the camera. Now.”
    And then Tio did something unbelievable. He clenched his jaw — I could actually see a muscle tightening at the edge of both his pudgy cheeks, “You’ll have to take it from me.”
    There was a shocked silence.
    “Are you kidding? I’m twice as big as you are. This is ridiculous. Hand it over.”
    “No. You’re going to take me with you. Into the locker room. You think you can do this on your own. But you need help.”
    I glared at him, hands on hips.
    He had the decency to look away for a second. “Okay, maybe you don’t want me to get in trouble too if things get ugly. But that doesn’t change the fact that I can get closer to a boys locker room than you can.”
    “Not without a University I.D. badge, you can’t. And you can't take the picture. It has to be me.”
    “I’m not letting you mess this up.”
    Oh no he didn’t. Of the two of us, he was the one that always crashed and burned under stress, and we both knew it.
    The knuckles on Tio’s hand holding the camera were white. The one thing that was clear was that he wasn’t backing down. If I wanted that camera, I had to include him. But taking Tio with me was a pure disaster in the making — I’d never be able to live with myself if I got him expelled. His life would be absolute hell if he had to start over in another school.  
    Why was he doing this to me?  
    Maybe we’d all ruffled his hair too many times, and treated him too often like a little kid. Heck, he was going to be 16 soon. Was I willing to risk this one shot to save the trees, all for his ego? To be honest, all for our friendship? Because if I shut him out, even for his own good — no scratch that — especially for his own good, nothing would ever be the same between us again.
    I tilted my trombone case up over my shoulder, elbow up and pointed forward, the handle gripped in my fist. I looped my other elbow around Tio’s head and tucked it into my side, so that he oofed and had to walk hunched over sideways, trotting again, to keep up.
    “Let’s do this thing,” I said, hoping I sounded braver than I felt.

    ***

    Viola, Tio and I stood together on the concrete ramp, side-by-side, a mass of humans roaring and screaming behind us. I’m not sure, but I think it meant that the game's score was close.  
    “Here’s the deal,” I shouted. I had my hands cupped around my mouth so they could hear, even