Free Running Loose by Chris Crutcher Page A

anything,” I said. “I’m saying that what he’s telling you about the game on Friday isn’t true.”
    Jasper, smart as he is, couldn’t make the distinction. He pointed a finger at me. “Louie, you’re about to get yourself in a lot of trouble.”
    “Then maybe I should go back to class,” I said.
    We stared at each other.
    “Louie,” he said, “you’re suspended until further notice. I will not have this kind of insolence going on in my school.”
    I stood up. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll get my stuff.”

CHAPTER 9
    When I told Becky later about the conversation in Jasper’s office, she said she was proud of me. And to tell you the truth, I was feeling pretty proud of myself. I came out of the office seeing things completely differently from the way I had going in. And I didn’t have to worry about the math test I was supposed to take that afternoon, having been given the old boot.
    Anyway, the bell rang just as I was coming out, and Becky met me at the lockers, where I was clearing out some of my stuff. I didn’t take it all because I knew I’d be back.
    “Suspended? They suspended you?” she said. “I don’t believe it!”
    “Go ask,” I said.
    “I believe you ,” she said, “I just don’t believe it .”She was ready to go in and unload on them. Right then. To tell you the truth, if she had, I don’t think they’d have stood a chance, but I told her to hold off and we’d talk about it later.
    Then Carter came up. “How’d it go?” he asked.
    I said not quite as planned. “Gave me the boot. Good luck on the math test. Try to remember the answers. I’ll be back.”
    He said we’d work something out, that he’d talk to me after practice.
    I really wasn’t too worried about whether or not I’d get back in school. I mean, I don’t think they can expel you forever when there’s no place else to go, especially if you’re not armed and dangerous. Besides, Norm’s the chairman of the school board, and though he doesn’t usually exercise much muscle about daily goings-on in school, I figured Jasper wouldn’t be comfortable letting too many board meetings go by with me out. And he’d have to meet with Norm and Brenda as parents. That’s the rule when someone gets suspended. Since I’d been pretty cool in the office and hadn’t done some dumb-butt thing that Norm couldn’t defend, and since Norm’s a lot smarter than Jasper, I figured my days as an outcast were numbered.
    When I talked to Becky that night, she said if Ithought it would do any good, she’d quit cheerleading and raise a stink, that this whole thing was getting too crazy. Like she’d said before, she just did it for exercise anyway. I said that didn’t seem necessary; it was good exercise, and I kind of liked going out with a cheerleader. We have girls’ sports at Trout, now that there’s a law, but they aren’t taken very seriously because Jasper and Lednecky, who are the powers around here, think that a girls’ sports program is nonsense. In fact, back in the days when Jasper and I were still talking to each other and I was doing an article on girls’ sports for the school paper, he said he couldn’t get behind an athletic program for girls because girls weren’t emotionally equipped for competitive athletics. That was just a fact of life. Too many tears. I heard Lednecky say one time that Trout was shooting for minimum compliance with the law: Let some teacher make a few extra bucks coaching the girls, give them gym time when it didn’t interfere with the boys, and let them have their fun. Girls’ athletics has come a little ways here since then mostly because of some girls’ parents pointing out the finer points of that law, but all in all, it’s a pretty sad program, not one Becky would have ever been interested in getting into.
    If it wasn’t being done well—whatever it was—Becky wouldn’t do it.
    Jasper and Lednecky are pretty cute talking about people’s emotional equipment. Last year at