Free I and Sproggy by Constance C. Greene Page B

“Can you imagine anything as stupid as a parrot watching All My Children ?”
    Burton settled on his perch like an old lady anticipating her afternoon outing. He gave the screen his rapt attention.
    â€œWhat’d you do that for?” Kenny asked, his voice high and thin, like a violin playing in the distance. “She’s not all that bad.”
    â€œWhy’d you have to take her in the club?” Adam said. “You didn’t even tell me it was a chess club now. I didn’t know you guys knew how to play chess, even. How come nobody asked me what I thought?”
    â€œI told you my brother was teaching me how to play,” Kenny said, on the defensive. “My father taught him and he’s teaching me.”
    â€œHow about you?” Adam asked Steve.
    â€œI read a book about it,” Steve said. “We were going to tell you. We just didn’t get around to it.”
    â€œWell, I don’t play, so that lets me out, right? That lets me out right on my butt. I didn’t want to be in that club, anyway.”
    â€œThat’s what you told us. You said you were going to quit.” Kenny and Steve got up and dusted crumbs all over the rug.
    â€œIf she didn’t have a quarter to pay your lousy dues, you wouldn’t give her the time of day, and you know it,” Adam said deliberately.
    â€œThat’s not true,” Kenny said in a loud voice. “We’d take her in even if she didn’t have the bread.”
    â€œHow about you? You guys pay the twenty-five cents?” Adam asked, smiling at them in an unfriendly fashion.
    â€œWe each put an IOU in the till,” Steve said. “When we get our allowance, we pay up.”
    â€œYou guys make me laugh,” Adam said. He felt like bawling. “You really make me laugh.”
    Kenny opened his mouth, closed it. At the door he turned. “There’s nothing wrong with Sproggy,” he said. “She’s an O.K. kid. I and Steve like her. We like her a lot. Come on,” he said to Steve. “Let’s split.”
    Adam and Burton were alone. Crouched in front of the TV, they watched, waiting for the unraveling of terrible events, the inevitable disasters, listening to the droning voices, the sad music, while outside the sun shone.
    And inside, all was sadness and woe.

CHAPTER 12
    The sound of rain on the windows, which woke Adam Thursday morning, suited his mood. It would probably rain every day until Monday, the first day of school. On Monday the sun would shine in a cloudless sky.
    â€œMa,” he said at breakfast, dallying with his egg, waiting for the precise right moment to prick the yolk and watch it ooze over his plate. When he was little, his mother had recited a verse to him which went:
    Oh, what a fork prick ,
    Oh, what a thrust .
    My beautiful yellow middle
    Is bust .
    It was his favorite poem.
    â€œMa, how come I got no ethnic background?” he said.
    She stopped reading the paper long enough to look at him over the top of her glasses.
    â€œHow come you ain’t got no ability to speak properly, either?” she asked.
    â€œI mean it. I got no ethnic background,” he complained. “Everybody else I know has got one. Charlie’s got blood from all over. His wife Millie, too. Mr. Early told me he came to Ellis Island from Austria when he was two years old. And Kenny said his great-greatgrandfather was a horse thief in the old country and escaped to America by changing his name. Of course”—Adam broke his toast into tiny pieces—“with Kenny, you got to take everything with a grain of salt. But me. I got nothing to brag about except I was born in Brooklyn. Big deal.”
    â€œYou are some deprived kid,” his mother said. “My heart bleeds for you. Your ethnic background is as good as anyone else’s.”
    â€œI bet even that creep Sproggy has an ethnic background.” Adam went on complaining, not hearing what his