Free Heads or Tails by Jack Gantos Page B

in a house trailer. She wants to rejoin and I’m giving the badge back to her. She’s never caused me a bit of trouble and I can see that you aren’t cut out for the job.”
    I turned and walked out of the room. I knew I was being disrespectful, but I didn’t care. I rode my bike home as hard as I could. If I see Donna in the street, I thought, I’ll flatten her. I’ll call her a liar and then I’ll run her over.
    I didn’t have time to eat lunch. I grabbed my bag of cans and bottles and took them to the Piggly Wiggly supermarket and redeemed them for two dollars. Then I went next door to Woolworth’s and bought the canary. It seemed very happy in its cardboard cage and chirped all the way home. I put it in my room and raced to school. I made it back just in time. Still, Mrs. Marshall gave me a dirty look as I took my seat.
    After school, I went home and got the bird. Suddenly, I was nervous. I didn’t know if the old lady wanted another bird. If she didn’t, I’d have to talk Mom into keeping it or tell Woolworth’s the bird had a disease, like beak rot, and they’d have to give me my money back. I put the cage in my bike basket and headed for Donna’s corner.
    She was dragging the policeman across the road.
    “Thanks a lot for telling Mrs. Marshall I was doing a lousy job,” I said.
    “You should be mad at yourself for hanging around that old nut,” she said right back.
    “I can do anything I feel like doing. Any time I feel like doing it.”
    “You aren’t going to give that old witch a bird, are you?” she asked, rolling her eyes.
    “Mind your own business.”
    “She’ll probably cook it.”
    “I wish she’d cook you.”
    “You’re weird,” Donna said, matter-of-factly. “You know I could arrest you.”
    “That badge doesn’t mean a thing. It’s fake. A real policeman would laugh at you.” I reached out and tried to snatch it off her belt. I wanted to jump up and down on it, but she stepped back.
    “Look out,” she barked and dropped into a crouch. “I know karate.” She struck a fighting pose and hissed like a snake.
    “You don’t scare me,” I said. “You or your badge.”
    I turned away and crossed the street. I knocked on the old lady’s door, and when she opened it, I gave her the bird.
    “For you,” I said.
    She had a lovely smile, just like my grandmother. She was still trembling all over like a little poodle. “Why, you are a fine young man,” she said in her shaky voice. “What’s your name?”
    “Jack,” I said.
    “Then I’ll name the bird Jack,” she said.
    That was fine with me.

I HAD BEEN DRIVING Betsy nuts. I’m not allowed in her bedroom, but I’d been sneaking in and listening to her new radio on Saturday mornings when she takes modern-dance lessons with Sue Peabo. My radio was so old it only got the local stations. But hers got everything.
    There was just one show that interested me: “The UFO Talk Line.” People from all over the world called in to report UFO sightings and to explain why the government is always hiding the evidence. There were reports of a formation of silver UFOs over Brazil, and then the same ones were seen as far away as Rumania, and then back over Washington, D.C. But our government was denying any such sightings, even though a radio caller, Mr. Fralinger, had seen them with his own eyes. Each show, which was hosted by Dr. D. Beebe and sponsored by Dixie Cake Company, always had an invited guest who was either an expert or someone who had actually seen a UFO. Once they had on a lumberjack from Maine who had been captured and examined for five days by UFO doctors. After that show, I climbed up onto our house roof and sent out waves of “mental telepathy” thought messages to UFO pilots, telling them where I was and that I was willing to give up my life on earth to go live on another planet.
    Dr. D. Beebe reported that the government has many crashed UFOs in warehouses and has real alien beings kept in freezers so they can