The Alex Crow by Andrew Smith

Author:Andrew Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2015-02-24T05:00:00+00:00

SUCK IT UP, ICEMAN

Jupiter should have won the interplanetary tug-of-war competition that afternoon—we normally would have—but three of Jupiter’s boys were too tired after staying up most of the night, committing acts of thievery, reading terrifying nonfiction, and smoking pot in the woods.

It was the most fun I’d ever had in my life.

At least Max ate a big breakfast.

Cobie Petersen propped his elbows on the picnic table and cradled his face in his hands.

“I am so fucking tired. Why don’t they let us sleep late like regular boys?”

Robin Sexton twitched his thumbs and rocked back and forth slightly, listening to nothing at all through his toilet-paper-and-kite-string earbuds.

Max spooned a blob of oatmeal he’d topped with milk and grape jelly into his mouth. “Look around you. Let me know if you see any regular boys here.”

“You should get stoned more often if it makes you eat like that,” I said.

Max bit into a bagel. “That fat camp summer almost killed me.”

“Mrs. Nussbaum says all us guys only have about fifty years to live anyway,” Cobie Petersen said. “We might as well try and die fat.”

Trent Mendibles, the boy with the hairiest legs anyone had ever seen, perked his head up and said, “Wait. You guys got stoned last night?”

“No,” Max said. “It was just a . . . uh . . . figure of speech.”

“Nothing’s better than getting zombied out and blasting away assholes on BQTNP,” Trent said.

Trent Mendibles didn’t think about many things.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, hairy gamer dude from Ohio,” Cobie Petersen mumbled into his hands.

“Hook me up with some weed. I want to get high,” Trent said.

Cobie and Max answered simultaneously, like they were singing the Jupiter-Jesus Boys song.

They said, “No.”

Trent Mendibles leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “Give me some. Or I’ll tell Larry what you guys did.”

For a moment, it became deathly quiet at our table in the pavilion. I looked at Trent, then Max, and finally to Cobie. Robin Sexton seemed oblivious, as usual.

And Cobie Petersen raised his eyes from his palms and calmly told Trent Mendibles, “I will kill you when you’re asleep tonight.”

Max added, “He will. Believe me. I’ll help him.”

Trent Mendibles sat back on the bench. “You guys are fuckers.”

Then Cobie put his head down on the table and said, “Ariel. Go get me something to eat.”

Horace, Mars cabin’s counselor, whose condoms were stolen the night before by Cobie Petersen and my brother Max, stood up at the Mars boys’ table and bellowed, “All right! Clean up and get out to the rec field for competition!”

Cobie Petersen, the strongest boy at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys, missed breakfast. It was going to cost our team significantly.

We five boys of Jupiter got dragged through the mud five times that day.

Cobie Petersen was our anchor. But he was useless—dead on his feet. We all were. Well, except for Robin Sexton and Trent Mendibles. But they were useless anyway.

I had played tug-of-war before; who hasn’t? But I had no idea that at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys the game would involve a wide and deep pit of soupy mud.

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