AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Everyone had to write down his or her first and second choices.
Joe the Armadillo won, and Dumbo was elected vice ruler of the world. If for any reason Joe was unable to fulfill his obligations, Dumbo would take over.
Armpit tried not to let his disappointment show. After all, it was just a stupid assignment, and people just voted for the only ones they could remember.
“I’m sorry Coo didn’t win,” Tatiana said to him after class. She placed her hand on his arm as she said it.
“No biggie.”
“You gave the best speech,” she told him, her hand still there.
“It would have made Ginny happy.”
“She’s your sister?”
“My neighbor.”
“That’s right. She has leukemia?”
“Cerebral palsy.”
Armpit wondered if Tatiana had forgotten her hand was there, but if she had, he wasn’t about to remind her. Her fingernails were painted green. Her perfume smelled like cantaloupe.
“Say, listen,” he said. “Do you like Kaira DeLeon?”
She squeezed his arm. “‘Red Alert!’ I love that song.”
“You want to go to the concert on Saturday?”
She bit her lip. “You mean with you?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah?” he asked, just to make sure.
She smiled. “Yeah.”
By the time economics was over, Armpit had convinced himself that X-Ray had already sold the last two tickets and that he was going to have to buy two from a scalper for fifteen hundred dollars. He could hear X-Ray’s voice in his head. “Seven hundred and fifty dollars—each.”
When the bell rang he bolted out of his seat and hurried to the office, where he asked the secretary if he could use the phone. She seemed sympathetic, but it was against school policy. Apparently not the principal, the superintendent, or even the president of the United States could change school policy.
Where was Joe the Armadillo when you needed him?
He left the office and spotted Matt Kapok, a skinny white guy from his economics class. Matt was probably the only student in his class who was taking summer school because he wanted to, not because he had to.
“Matt!” Armpit shouted as he charged toward him. “You got fifty cents? I’m desperate, man!”
Matt backed up against a row of lockers as he took his wallet out of his back pocket. “Uh, su
re. Here.” He held out a dollar, but it dropped out of his hand before Armpit could take it.
As Armpit bent down to pick it up, Matt sidestepped him and quickly disappeared around the corner.
“I’ll pay you back!” Armpit called after him, but didn’t know if Matt heard him.
He went back to the office, where the secretary gave him four quarters for the dollar, then went to the pay phone and called X-Ray.
