Free Trout and Me by Susan Shreve Page B

sick?”
    “I’m just
not
going to school,” I said.
    “What are you going to tell your parents?”
    “I’ll call them from New York so they won’t worry.”
    “Oh, brother,” Trout said. “We could be suspended.”
    “I thought you were the one who didn’t worry about that sort of stuff,” I said.
    “I’ve just never been to New York before,” Trout said, but he agreed he wasn’t
so
worried and we decided to meet at eight on the corner of Peartree and Euclid, two blocks from school, and head to the train station from there.
    “Bring money,” I said.
    “Do you have any?”
    “I’ve got about a hundred dollars saved and more in the bank,” I said.
    “I don’t know how much I’ve got,” Trout said.
    “I’ll lend you some,” I said, and hung up the phone quickly when I heard my father coming into the living room.
    My dad wanted to talk to me about Trout. He sat down on the couch, put his feet up on the coffee table the way he does, and said he was getting some bad vibes about my new friend Trout.
    “Like what?” I asked.
    “It seems a group of parents are getting together and trying to get Trout into a special school.”
    “I know about that. So you’re getting to be like Mom and think I shouldn’t hang out with him?”
    “Just tell me about him, Benjamin. I trust your judgment.”
    “Mom doesn’t.”
    “That’s not true. She’s just worried about you. Before spring vacation you were beginning to get on top of things at school, and in the last three weeks, since Trout arrived, we’re getting telephone calls from your teachers almost every day.”
    “It’s not Trout’s fault,” I said, and told him everything I knew about Trout.
    “The school worries that his father travels and leaves him at home alone.”
    “Someone named Ginger in the apartment buildingwhere they live checks in on him. Like every five minutes. That’s what Trout told me.”
    “But he’s eleven, Ben.”
    I shrugged.
    “You don’t go over there after school, do you?”
    “Nope,” I said. “But I’m not going to stop being his friend. I like him. I told Mom that Trout is the only friend I’ve had since first grade who I trust completely. I mean, he never thinks I’m stupid.”
    “Well, I’m glad about that,” my dad said, giving my shoulder a gentle punch. “That says a lot.”
    “So you don’t mind that we’re friends?”
    “I don’t mind at all as long as you just let me know things about him.”
    “Yeah,” I agreed. “I’ll keep you up to date.”
    That night I couldn’t sleep a bit. All I could think about was New York and going alone on the train with Trout and walking through the city just the two of us, like we were grown up. And about Ritalin.

It was “a piece of cake,” as my dad would say. I met Trout at exactly eight at the corner of Peartree and Euclid. Actually, Max and Meg dropped me off there because I was late. I think Mom had a second sense that something was going on, and after breakfast she kept asking me questions about my math homework and whether I was keeping up in my chapter books and whether I wanted to go to a lake in New Hampshire for summer vacation after I finished tutoring. I was so anxious to get out of the house I didn’t even argue about tutoring. But by the time we had finished talking, it was too late to meet Trout, which is why Max drove me.
    Trout was waiting, sitting on a brick wall in front of a house on Euclid, but Meg didn’t see him and I was glad of that. I didn’t want her to tell Mom for any reason, especially since we were just skipping school, not bothering to call in an excuse.
    I had about a hundred dollars in my pocket, and we walked to the train station and made the 8:20 New Jersey Transit easily, and the best thing was that I didn’t see anyone I knew on the train who might call my parents or the school. Everyone knows my parents, especially my father, since he owns the hardware store. So plenty of people know Meg and me too. But