Free Totally Joe by James Howe Page B

me he liked me.
    Addie got really furious about it when I first told her. She said she was going to talk to him, but I begged her not to, and for once she listened. Then she said, “This is all the more reason we need a GSA in this school!”
    Whatever. We haven’t even gotten this no-name-calling thing off the ground yet, and here goes Addie with another cause. She has more causes than her parents’ car has bumper stickers. I guess it’s cool to care so much and all that, but sometimes Addie wears me out. And, well, I’m not sure if having a club with the word “gay” in it would help or just make things worse.
    Usually, I love Thanksgiving weekend because it’s the first long break from school. And I was really looking forward to it this year because I thought it would give Colin and me a lot of time to hang out together. Yeah, well, that didn’t happen.
    Addie and her family left for the weekend the day after Thanksgiving, and Kelsey’s been away the whole time. But Bobby and Skeezie have been around. They came over to my house this afternoon (Sunday). We were hanging out in my room eating turkey loaf and leftover sweet potato pie. Skeezie
est un cochon, vraiment!
Really, he should wear a bib. I wouldn’t have been watching him, except I had to keep an eye on where the sweet potato pie was going to land. I mean, bright orange on my lime green shag carpet would not have been pretty.
    Bobby noticed the new painting on my wall right away. It’s kind of hard to miss, since it’s almost as big as the wall,but of course Skeezie, who was looking right at it, said, “What painting?”
    â€œPam painted it, didn’t she?” Bobby asked.
    I told him yeah. “She gave it to me when she moved out,” I said. “She wanted me to keep it.”
    â€œOh, that’s a painting,” Skeezie said. “I thought it was, like, wallpaper.”
    Bobby shook his head but otherwise ignored Skeezie, which is usually the best thing to do. “That was really nice of her, Joe,” he said to me. “It’s something to remember her by.”
    â€œYeah, that and all the other things she left around here. Except I guess she’ll be coming back for those.”
    Bobby said, “She’ll be back for Christmas, right?”
    â€œThat’s what she says,” I told him. “I really miss her. Who’s going to streak my hair or paint my fingernail?”
    Skeezie said, “I’ll do it.”
    â€œYeah,” I said, “like I’m letting somebody who can’t get sweet potato pie from his plate to his mouth without half of it ending up on his shirt anywhere near me.”
    Skeezie looked down at his shirt and went, “You’re exaggerating, JoDan. That’s nowhere near half.”
    Me: Even if she does come back at Christmas, it won’t be the same. She’s just going to turn around and leave again.
    Bobby: You’re lucky she comes back. I miss my mom a lot at Christmas. It’s the hardest day of the year for me. Well, the day she died is hard, too. And her birthday. And Mother’s Day. I hate Mother’s Day.
    Skeezie: Every Father’s Day, I take a picture of my dad and burn it.
    Bobby: Sometimes I have these dreams where my mom comes back for a visit. I know she’s dead and all—I mean, I know it in the dream—so I don’t get all freaked out the way Scrooge does when he sees Marley’s ghost. It’s kind of natural, her visiting. In this one dream, we went to the Candy Kitchen and had ice cream, and I told her what was going on in my life.
    Me: I remember that your mom had a real sweet tooth.
    Skeezie: Like you.
    Bobby: Yeah, we liked our ice cream, all right. Rocky Road. That was her favorite. Another time, I had this dream where she was sitting next to me in school. Nobody could see her or hear her but me, but she was so
real
sitting there. She kept smiling at me and