Free Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes

how long and everybody else was staring at the wall or the ceiling. Then my voice said, “Leave him alone,” real loud.
    Ramscik stared at me.
    I said, “Squid can talk when he wants to talk. And he’s not all alone. He’s got his aunt, you heard him. And me and Paul’re gonna go shoot baskets with Squid Saturday morning. Maybe he’ll talk to us.” I still don’t know where that came from. It got Ramscik off Squid’s case, though, and back into talking to us about staying away from drugs and peer pressure and sex.
    After therapy, in the hall, Squid said, “I suck at shooting baskets,” and Paul said, “Me too, and besides I have clarinet practice on Saturday mornings. What were you making up, Shoemaker?”
    “Something to get that asshole off Squid’s case,” I said. “If you had a better idea you should’ve been faster.”
    “’Preciate it,” Squid said. He touched my arm just for a second, and kind of half smiled. I smiled back for all I was worth. I couldn’t stand to think how lonely the guy was feeling. Christ, if that wasn’t a lesson—lose your rabbit and other kids swarm all over you, lose your mom and you’re invisible—what a thing to know about your friends. I wanted to be a friend for him worse than I’d ever wanted anything.
    Well, I guess I managed it. Squid followed us to lunch like a lost puppy. It was like a month before his jock friends started hanging out with him again. Meanwhile, since Squid and me were both lonely kids, and we knew what was wrong with each other, and didn’t want to talk about it, before we even realized it was weird, we were friends.
    Just before school got out, the judge decided that the house and the kids went to old Cabrillo, which meant Squid’s dad was in there on his mom’s bed with a girl just seven years older than Squid, and a lot of the nice way his mom had fixed the place up went all to hell. And my mom got serious about being a pretend hippie philosopher and a real drunk bimbo. Squid and I started running into each other at older-kid parties, where we got pretty good at stealing or begging booze. By the end of eighth grade, Squid and me were pretty regular drinking buddies, and all that summer, we’d get odd jobs together, then go to whatever party we could get into, and wind up in a vacant lot or behind a building, drinking till we passed out. We talked whenever it was necessary. Mostly it wasn’t.
    Okay, here’s the worst part. I don’t remember ever talking about it, but Squid knew about the rabbit. I could see that in his eyes. He never said a word, he just knew.
    But Squid forgave me. Really forgave me, I mean, all the way to trusting me and accepting me as his friend, and I would swear I didn’t have a more loyal friend from then on.
    Which I’d never have done for him. I can be an okay guy but I wouldn’t have it in me to be that good to someone who’d done something so awful to me.
    So my revenge was a mixed bag. I kept Al from playing his last game as quarterback and deprived him of the peak of his life. But killing that poor rabbit—all I accomplished was to prove that Squid might have a mean streak, but he was still a much better guy than I was.
    Me? I was a vicious crazy bastard who hurt helpless things when he thought he could get away with it.
    So that’s how I got to be called Psycho Shoemaker and why the name stuck. I earned it, I deserved it, and it was all my doing.

5
    Normal Guys Walk with Pretty Girls Who Giggle
    LARRY O’GRARY WAS just getting into line when I got to the cafeteria. He wore his blond hair halfway down his back; he was “about six feet tall and weighed about six pounds, or it might be the other way round,” as he said, every time he got the chance.
    That was one of many things he said to be weird. I mean, Larry really was weird, no question, but I guess not being innately weird like the Madmen, he felt he had to work at it.
    You know how a girl who isn’t naturally pretty will wear too much