Free The Pricker Boy by Reade Scott Whinnem Page A

and he brushes them off. “I can handle Dean. He’s a lot harder to handle than Ronnie, that’s for damn sure, but I’ll handle him.”
    “I dunno,” I say. I don’t want to go, but I want to go. I want to hang out with Pete again, but I’d rather we do it in the woods with the others, not at a drunken kegger with people screaming and falling all over each other. “I’ll think about it.”
    “No you won’t,” he says. “You’ll hang out with the kids in the woods and go looking for the bogeyman.”
    I stand up. “Dinner’s on the table. You coming?”
    “That wouldn’t go over so well. My mother doesn’t want me over there. She doesn’t even want you stepping foot in our yard, so you better duck under the pines if you don’t want to hear her screeching.”
    “Come with me. She’ll never know.”
    Pete snuffs out his cigarette. “You just don’t get it, do you? Nobody wants me around! Nobody but you!” He stands up and pushes me gently back toward the pines. I don’t say anything else. I know I’ve already pressed my luck. “I don’t care about any of them. I don’t want to see them, and if you don’t stop nipping at my heels like apuppy, I won’t want to see you either.” I step backward and stumble over their lawn mower. Pete grabs my arm as I fall, lifts me back onto my feet.
    “Go home,” he says. I duck underneath the pines and head through to my house.
    “What are we eating?” I ask.
    The Cricket had been eating happily, and watching him act silly has cheered me up a bit. When I question what is on my plate, he pulls back his fork and eyes it suspiciously. He holds the forkful of dinner up to his ear, listening to it carefully, then cautiously placing it back on his plate as if it were explosive. Silently moving his lips, he pretends to question his glass of milk about its curious neighbor. They converse in mime, but when the milk offers no real answers he turns to his buttered bread with a broad smile and an imaginary notepad, ready to record the facts. My mother is trying not to laugh.
    “It’s called American chop suey,” my father says. Upon hearing the name, the Cricket lets a karate chop fall on the table. From now on, that will be the sign for Dad’s cooking, I have no doubt.
    My father can be a great cook. When he plans well, he can create gourmet meals that you never want to see end. But it’s a different story when it comes to improvisation. Whenever the fridge becomes overloaded with leftovers, my mother will ask my father to do the cooking, and theresult is always a hodgepodge of the various styles my mother has been experimenting with all week. It’s not unusual to find yourself eating fish-curry goulash, or green scrambled eggs, or the ever popular soup. If it’s soup, you never look at what your spoon brings up, ever.
    Inspired by the Cricket’s goofiness, I decide to press my father. “Couldn’t Mom have cooked tonight?” I ask. My mother smiles, and Robin looks uncomfortable.
    “Stucks, there is an artistry to what I do,” my father retorts. “One day, when you are grown-up and paying your own grocery bills and are no longer a burden on your mother and me, we will have to change our phone number because you will constantly be calling me for recipes just such as this.”
    I take another forkful. It isn’t bad, really, whatever it is. It’s just fun to give my father the business.
    “What do you think, Nana?” I ask.
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says bashfully, her eyes focusing on me through a haze. “I was having my own conversation … with me.”
    The Cricket is sitting next to Nana. He is eyeing her left hand. I can tell that he is about to reach out and touch the finger stub, which has fascinated him since he was a baby. He puts down his fork and reaches slowly forward.
    Nana lunges at him, releasing a squeal and grabbing at him with the hand. Horrified, the Cricket leaps back, blank terror in his eyes. He hops out of