house from his own. He wished he knew what Harvey was talking
about, but Harvey was such a smart guy, while he—he was below
average. Below average was what they called him, but he knew
exactly what they meant by that. Well, he didn’t know
exactly
what
they meant, but he had a pretty good idea.
Anyway, Harvey always seemed to look out for him in times of
trouble, and that made him happy. There was the time he was getting
his head pounded on the sidewalk by the neighborhood bully, and
Harvey said he’d call the police if they didn’t keep the noise down.
Boy did that ever save him. Or that other time, when he was flunking
out of high school, and he asked Harvey to help him and Harvey said,
“Why don’t you just give up?” Yeah. Give up. That was the best advice
anyone ever gave him. Now he didn’t have to go to school anymore.
His life was perfect: lackadaisical days of Nintendo, bong loads,
videotape rentals, and orange-colored snack foods. His idea of
heaven. Well, except for his nagging foster parents and the fact that
he was always completely broke.
When he got back to his house, his friends were already breaking
stuff.
“Hey! What are you doing? My folks’ll kill me!” He yelled,
stepping over a pile of burnt toast and into the living room.
Bob’s foster parents were gone for the holidays and his friends
had moved in temporarily to keep him company and also to eat his
food. Wade, an overweight Cambodian with long, greasy hair looked
up and answered him casually, “Hey relax, Bobbo. We were watching
VTV and they had this special on
Violence in the Animal Kingdom
,
and, well, Trusty freaked out and pissed on the TV. It doesn’t work,
so we came up with this great idea on how to get a new one. You said
your folks hated this dinette set anyways.”
“ I never said that. I said they hate when I use it. They love that
dinette set.”
“Oh, whoops. Well, check it out, man. We’re going to build a
really awesome stage out of all the wood. Then we’re gonna put on a
puppet show at the New Year’s Day Parade in two weeks. I hear the
handouts are phenomenal. My brother Ed set up his drums there last
year and made a hundred dollars. And that was from a guy who
wanted him to stop.”
“Wow!” Bob burst out, now visibly excited, forgetting about the
damage, “That’s a lot of money! But what’re you gonna do about
H O L Y S H I T !
6
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