Thirteen Read Online Free Page A

sweet, nutty brother, Ty. I loved him with all my heart, but I worried about him sometimes.
    Like now, for instance. The sound of duct tape being ripped from the roll jerked me out of my Lars fantasies and dropped me back into cold, hard reality.
    â€œTy, what are you doing?” I asked. It was Monday morning. We’d leave for school in five minutes. Mom would drop Ty off at Trinity, while I’d ride with Sandra to Westminster.
    â€œTaping up my pants,” Ty said. He ripped a foot-long strip of Day-Glo orange from the roll. He wrapped it around the leg of his gray sweats, affixing it to his ankle.
    â€œOkay, yeah. Got that,” I said. “ Why ?”
    â€œSo snakes can’t crawl in,” he said. He frowned. The tape was misbehaving and getting all twisty at the end.
    â€œTy,” I said, “there are no snakes at Trinity.”
    â€œHow do you know? How do you know for sure ?” he asked. “You never know. That’s what you told me last night.”
    Well, true. But that was because I was in charge of making him take his bath, and he had refused to wash his hair. Should a six-year-old refuse to wash his hair? No. Should a six-year-old need bath-time supervision at all? No again. Ty was such the baby of the family. One of these days he was going to have to grow up, and then what was he going to do?
    But yes. I’d played the lice card, telling him that lice loved dirty scalps and you never knew when a louse was on the prowl.
    It worked, and now I was paying the price.
    â€œI wasn’t talking about snakes,” I said.
    â€œIf a rattlesnake crawls in my pants, it will bite me,” Ty said. He ripped and pasted one last strip. “Now it can’t, because I have foiled it. Ha ha!”
    He straightened up. His sweats bagged around his skinny legs, then tapered at his shins, bound messily with orange tape. He was Duct-Tape-Boy, with his hair all stick-y-up-y from falling asleep with it wet.
    â€œDon’t you think people will…”
    â€œWhat?”
    Laugh at you , I’d been about to say. But it seemed cruel. Ty was six. He shouldn’t have to deal with the harshness of fashion.
    Then again, maybe it would be crueler to let him march off like that?
    I came at it more gently. “Do other kids tape their pants up?”
    â€œNo,” he said. He thought for a moment. “But Lexie has sparkly pants.”
    â€œShe does?”
    His lips twitched in a way that was new for him this year—which I guess showed that he was growing up more than I gave him credit for. It was a twitch that meant I want to tell you this, but I’m also self-conscious. A little. But not so much that I’m not going to tell you anyway. “I like her in her sparkly pants.”
    â€œUh- huh .”
    â€œThat’s why I’m taping my pants. That and the snakes.” Again the mouth-twitch, along with a glance to make sure I wouldn’t make fun of him. “I want to be brave for Lexie.”
    â€œAnd taping up your pants makes you brave?”
    â€œYes,” he said, “because if I am brave in my heart, knowing that snakes can’t get in, then I will be brave on the outside, too.”
    â€œAhhh,” I said. Well, it made a goofy sort of sense, I guess. I just hoped Lexie went for boys with duct-taped sweats.
    Mom hurried in. She was running late, as usual. “Come on, Ty, let’s go,” she said. She took in Ty’s pants. A pained look crossed her face, which then de-wrinkled into a resigned oh well expression.
    â€œLast week a little boy named Daniel wore a pirate costume,” she told me.
    â€œAnd he peed on the playground,” Ty added. “He did a tree-pee, which is not allowed.”
    â€œA first-grader peed on the playground?” I said.
    â€œHe did it so the teachers couldn’t see,” Ty said.
    Mom narrowed her eyes. “Ty, you are not to pee on the