Free Trout and Me by Susan Shreve

for school and they work all day till six and then they get groceries and come home and we eat dinner. They’ll never know the difference.”
    “So you wouldn’t have to be back till six?”
    “Right,” I said.
    Trout sat on the step with his chin in his hand.
    “What would we need to do?”
    “Call in sick.”
    “They’d recognize our voices, don’t you think?”
    “I can disguise my voice,” I said.
    “What about tutoring? How many tutors do you have tomorrow?”
    “Two,” I said. “Ms. Afram for reading and Mr. Bart for math.”
    “I only have one,” Trout said.
    “Tutoring will be easy to cancel. We’d call the office and no one will know our voices.”
    “What about Meg? Do you think she’d call for us?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “I’d have to think about it.”
    “Maybe you should ask her first and then call me when you get home,” Trout said. “It makes me feel weird to call myself.”
    On the way home, I thought about skipping school. It made me happy just to think about it, to imagine meeting Trout at the corner and walking to the train and gettingon and getting off in New York City like we were regular grown-ups with jobs in the city and no time for school. And then I thought I could actually say I was sick and my mother would call school and notify the tutors. Maybe I could close the bathroom door and pretend to throw up. Who would know the truth? And even my mom understands you can’t go to school with the stomach flu. Then I’d have to call her a couple of times during the day so she’d think I was at home. And Meg could call in sick for Trout. I’d tell her Trout’s father was away and could she call to say that Trout had the stomach flu too. As long as Meg and Mom didn’t talk. It wasn’t a foolproof plan, I thought as I walked up the steps to our apartment. But it had possibilities.
    No one was at home when I got there so I had time to call the station for schedules on New Jersey Transit into New York City. There was a train at 8:20, which got to New York at 9:20, and one coming home at 4:17, so we wouldn’t be cutting it too close in case my mother decided to come home from work early.
    I called Trout.
    “It’ll be easy,” I said, and told him the plan.
    “That sounds okay,” he said. He sounded a little more excited than he had.
    As soon as I hung up from Trout, the telephone rang and I thought it was Trout calling me back, but it was my mom at the pharmacy.
    “I’m so glad you’re there, sweetheart,” she said.
    As soon as she calls me sweetheart in that maple-sugar voice, I know she’s going to say something I won’t like.
    “What’s up?” I asked.
    “I’ve got a doctor’s appointment for you this afternoon and I called the school to tell you about it, but you’d left already.”
    “I’m not sick.”
    “I know you’re not sick. Dr. Fern wants to see you.”
    “I see Dr. Fern once a week on Friday, Mom. I’m not going to see him any more than that. Already I see him too much.”
    “I’ll pick you up in ten minutes,” my mom said, and when I started to protest, I heard the click. She had hung up the phone.
    Dr. Fern sat in a chair in one corner of the room and my mother sat on a couch with me and my father sat in a chair next to the couch.
    “How come I didn’t know about this?” I asked.
    “We just found out, Ben,” my dad said.
    “What did you just find out?”
    “Your parents called me after the school called them this morning,” Dr. Fern said. He’s a small man, not much bigger than me and kind of funny-looking with a gray crew cut and a pointy beard and cowboy boots. I don’t like him and I especially don’t like the way he tries to be soincredibly pleasant, listening to me carefully as if I’m the most interesting boy he’s ever met. Which I know I’m not. He’s faking it. He’s paid to fake it. Paid a lot, according to Trout.
    What Mr. O’Dell had called my parents about was my uncontrollable behavior. I just don’t