Free The Alex Crow by Andrew Smith Page B

to get rid of me for a month or so, and I weigh a hundred and five, besides. The only reason I ever came here is ’cause my folks don’t have to pay for this shithole.”
    â€œNeither do mine,” Cobie Petersen said, raising his hand. And Cobie added, “I weigh one twenty-two, by the way, if we’re swapping personal statistics.”
    It was obvious to me that Cobie Petersen was unlike the other addicted boys at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys. Maybe, I thought, his parents worked at Alex Division or the Merrie-Seymour Research Group. I also had a feeling that if I was ever going to make a friend here—or anywhere—or actually start talking to someone, maybe I could talk to Cobie Petersen.
    And Larry went on, “Well, I don’t remember ever seeing you at fat camp.”
    I didn’t imagine Larry remembered much of anything from one session to the next at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys.
    Max said, “I was in Venus. The last year that cabin was used.”
    â€œYou were one of the kids who got beat up all the time?” Larry said.
    â€œWhatever.”
    Cobie Petersen stretched out his leg and kicked Robin Sexton.
    â€œHey, kid.” Cobie made his familiar take-that-shit-out-of-your-ears gesture to Robin.
    Robin Sexton looked worried. The last time Cobie wanted to engage in conversation with him didn’t go so well. Robin Sexton pulled out his plugs and said, “What do you want?”
    â€œHow much do your parents pay to keep you in this place?”
    Robin said, “Five thousand dollars,” and put the toilet paper wads back in his ears.
    Cobie kicked the kid again.
    â€œI’m not through talking to you. How much do you weigh?”
    I was very grateful that Robin Sexton did not answer Cobie Petersen’s question, because I didn’t remember how much I weighed in American pounds, and I didn’t want to talk about it, besides. They weighed me one time at William E. Shuck High School, in my physical education class, which turned out to be something very cruel and barbaric that involved daily nudity and name-calling, kind of like a state-sponsored ongoing performance of
Lord of the Flies
. If pressed, I would just say I weighed whatever Max said—one hundred five. Max and I were identical in size anyway, which was just another reason Max disliked me—sometimes Mom would switch our socks and underwear when they came out of the laundry.
    Nobody likes having his socks and underwear swapped out for some other guy’s.
    Then Larry said, “All right, Teacher’s Pet, stop trying to change the subject. It’s your turn to tell a scary story.”
    Cobie raised his hand and asked, “Am I the official
Teacher’s Pet
of Jupiter, Larry?”
    Larry tossed two logs into the fire. “Sure. If that’s what you want to be. Teacher’s Pet. Now, do you have anything to tell us?”
    â€œI do,” Cobie said. “And this is a true story, too—like Max’s was. Not like your steaming mound of shit.”
    Larry said, “You want to take a walk over to Earth with me right now? Just us four, and maybe we’ll drag along Earbuds, too? We’ll see how many of us make it back.”
    â€œJust tell the story,” Max said.
    And Cobie Petersen said this: “Okay. Here goes: I have seen the Dumpling Man. He is real.”
    And in the same way that anyone who lived near Sunday, West Virginia, would know where South Fork Route went, we had also all heard the stories about the Dumpling Man.
    Here’s what I’d learned since coming to Sunday: Dumpling Run was the name of a creek that spilled down the mountains in a series of falls that created scattered deep pools where the local kids would fish and swim in summertime. Along either side of the creek were homes spaced apart from one another on large acreage covered with old-growth forests.
    And every home up Dumpling Run was owned by a family whose last