Free My Brother's Keeper by Patricia McCormick Page A

me a pitying look, the kind you give someone who’s suddenly been hit with an acute case of mental retardation.
    Badowski comes over and thumps me on the head—so hard that if I didn’t have an acute case of mental retardation before, I definitely do now.
    Then Martha MacDowell and the other girls are walking away, and Arthur and Badowski are talking about what a great team it’s gonna be. Meanwhile, I’m trying to decide what’s the matter with a person who can get a Stargell rookie card, make the baseball team, and have a good-smelling girl smile at him, and still not feel like thumping people on the head or getting thumped on the head.
    I ’m a couple blocks away from school when a white car drives past, slams on the brakes, and backs up till it’s right next to me. Andy Timmons and his goatee are in the driver’s seat and the rest of the car is full of kids I sort of recognize from school, including the Pissing-Off-the-World kid, and a girl with spiky black hair, who’s in one of my study halls but who always sleeps through it.
    Andy Timmons sticks his head out the window and asks if I want a ride.
    “No, thanks.” I sound like Miss Manners.
    “Hey, Toby!” I hear Jake’s voice from somewhere in the backseat. Then he leans across the seat in front of a blond-haired girl and sticks his head out the window. “C’mon. Get in.”
    “That’s okay.”
    The door opens and a couple of empty beer cans fall out.
    “Get in,” says Andy Timmons.
    The whole thing feels like one of Mr. Fontaine’s peer pressure videos, where the low self-esteem kid goes along with the cool kids and ruins his life because he can’t say no. So I shake my head. Then the blond-haired girl, who I recognize from the lunchroom from wearing really short skirts and having teeth like a movie star and who I secretly think looks like Britney Spears, maybe even prettier, leans out the back window.
    “Is that your little brother?” she says to Jake. “He’s so cute” She makes it sound like I’m a pet gerbil or something. “What grade are you in?” she says to me.
    I have another attack of sudden retardation.
    When I don’t say anything, she turns to Jake. “What grade is he in?”
    “Freshman,” Jake says. “He’s only thirteen, though. He’s a brainiac. He skipped a grade when he was little.”
    Andy Timmons guns the motor. “Get in, brainiac.”
    Then the blond-haired girl pats the spot on the seat next to her, and the next thing I know I’m sitting in the back of Andy Timmons’s car, practically touching her.
    I try to think of something to say, but the only thing that comes to mind is how the chicken a la king school lunch that day looked exactly like Mr. Furry’s Fancy Feast Chicken Dinner. But even in my suddenly retarded condition, I know that’s not exactly a suave and sophisticated conversation starter. The only other thing that occurs to me is to tell her that she’s got the best teeth of anyone I’ve ever had the privilege of sitting near in my entire life. Instead, I say absolutely nothing and sit there like a box of frozen Food King appetizers.
    I can see, even from the backseat, that Andy Timmons is driving fifty-seven miles an hour, which is twenty-two miles an hour faster than the speed limit, but I don’t say anything. I don’t even say anything when he drives right past the turnoff for the highway, or when he turns onto Creekside Road, this windy road in the complete opposite direction of our house.
    I’m just sitting like a frozen mini-quiche when Andy Timmons starts jerking the steering wheel from side to side. The car swerves into the other lane, then swerves back into the lane we were supposed to be in. One minute I’m practically sitting on the blond girl’s lap, the next minute I’m being bashed into the door. I jam the lock down with my elbow and pray for him to stop. Or at least for everyone else in the car to stop laughing.
    The blond girl smiles a future-movie-star smile at me. “Don’t