Free The Glass Cafe by Gary Paulsen Page A

straight now but the kind you drink from a bottle and I put peanuts in the bottle and drink the Coke and eat the peanuts.
    I like Fiji. That’s an island country in the South Pacific and I read all about it in a travel magazine at Foo Won’s store. I’ll go there someday when I am (a) an adult, (b) successful and (c) have a Corvette and maybe (d) married to Melissa which is all part of the list I have for my Life Plan. I don’t want to live in Fiji but just visit there after I am certified on scuba gear and can dive, because the diving is supposed to be absolutely stellar there according to the magazine although I always thought stellar meant something to do with the stars.
    I do not like television but I used to like TV until Al said it was sucking the brain out of me and hit the set in just the right place to kill it with a small hammer we use to unstick the kitchen window when it’s hot and we want it open because the air conditioner only cools the living room and doesn’t blow into the kitchen and now it doesn’t work. The TV I mean. It hisses and pops but there’s no picture or sound. Then Al made me go with her to the library and I got dozens of books even though I didn’t read much then but do now and twice a week we have literary discussion evenings about books we have both read that week. We never had television discussion evenings twice a week when I watched TV and now I don’t like it anymore. TV I mean. And I don’t watch it at all even when I’m visiting Waylon who is my best outside friend and who is twelve and who has television and is maybe even a tube head and also does not have television or literary discussion evenings twice a week in his home. I think mostly because Waylon says his folks both work hard and are never really home. But Al works hard too, and is home almost all the time when she isn’t working.
    I like Waylon outside. Inside he mostly just sits around and talks about what he wants to do outside but outside he’s great on a bike when we want to ride the four miles down to the beach and watch the ocean or the beach freaks or the jugglers or the beach dogs working their Frisbees or taking balls out of the surf and we eat those rubbery hot dogs in limp buns which only taste good at the beach and I can never tell Al I ate because she says they’re made out of sheep’s eyeballs and testicles and petroleum byproducts and will make my liver rot before I’m sixteen which she says is a very bad age to have a rotten liver. Waylon is the best friend for all that and one inside thing too, the computer. Waylon is very good with a computer and sometimes we’ll sit in my house and work the Net. Al, who says the computer is good but not all parts of the Net are good, limits me to one hour a day on the Net and if I do more or if she catches me looking for porno sites she says she will take the little hammer we use on the kitchen window and tap the computer in just the right place to kill it. She likes that hammer and talked once about using it on the biker when he said something snotty I didn’t catch as we walked by but he must have believed her because he’s been nice ever since.
    And I like Al. I mean I know you’re supposed to like your mother or love your mother but I mean I like Al who never wants me to call her Mother or Mom or Ma but just Al like a friend, a best friend, better than Waylon even outside and Al is good both outside and inside and sometimes when it’s the worst day of my whole life and maybe Melissa is talking about somebody else or math is kicking my butt or I have a cold and the smog is making it worse Al can just laugh, a deep laugh that comes from way inside and I can’t help but smile and think of something good. Which makes what happened because of the drawings really, really stupid.

CHAPTER TWO
    T he thing is right about here if we followed Ms. Providge’s rules for English we would