Boy Bites Bug by Rebecca Petruck

Author:Rebecca Petruck [Petruck, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781419721410
Publisher: Amulet Books
Published: 2018-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

The morning of the presentation, Eloy wasn’t at his locker.

Not at the five-minute warning bell.

Not at the get-your-butt-to-class bell.

Eloy was supposed to bring the grasshoppers. And he wasn’t there.

With Mr. Herrera involved, it seemed unlikely that Eloy had bailed, but where the heck was he? When Will had eaten that stinkbug, he’d puked. Since Mr. Herrera had made them, the grasshoppers were bound to taste decent and not make Will sick, but since he would be the first to eat one in class, he had wanted to try one on his own, just in case. Now he wondered if there would be any to eat at all.

He sat in his seat, unmoving, and stared at the door to the social studies classroom.

“Where is he?” Simon asked.

“Where’s who?” Darryl grunted.

Eloy finally showed up when Mr. Hanson was halfway through taking attendance. Will wanted to leap across the room as if he were a grasshopper, too.

The minute class ended, Will went straight for Eloy.

“Sorry,” Eloy said immediately. “I started to take the bus, but then, the garlic is pretty strong, and I thought, on the bus . . .” He flapped a hand to fill in the blank, which Will interpreted as, I thought it wasn’t a good idea to take grasshoppers on a crowded bus with a bunch of idiotas. “But my sisters wouldn’t go without me, so by the time we got home and Mom yelled at me and we loaded everyone into the car . . .” He was breathless just trying to describe it.

“Where are they now?” Will asked. Eloy had made the right decision, but Will’s nerves weren’t up for reassuring him right then.

“Locker.”

“You got them?” Simon asked.

“Got what?” Darryl asked.

Will really wanted to put Simon in a headlock for letting Darryl follow him when he knew why Will needed to talk to Eloy alone.

“What do you need from him?” Darryl demanded.

Simon winced, finally figuring out what he’d done, though not sure what to do about it now.

Eloy just looked at Darryl.

“Wrestling stuff,” Will said.

Simon jumped in, grabbing Darryl’s arm to lead him away. “Jockstraps! Spandex! We’ve got to get out of here before we see something we can’t ever forget!”

Darryl squinted at Will.

“My eyes!” Simon wailed. “They burn!”

“You haven’t seen anything yet, loser,” Darryl said. He shook his head at Will before leading the fake-crying Simon away.

“Wrestling stuff, huh?” Eloy said to Will. He didn’t sound mad. He didn’t have to. After two weeks together wrestling, on the mats six days a week, Will had gotten to know Eloy’s tone of voice.

“He’ll come around,” Will said.

Eloy shrugged. “I don’t care.” He seemed to mean it, too, reminding Will of that time Eloy had said he didn’t want to be friends with Darryl. Will got why, but it still felt weird.

There were people who annoyed him, but even guys he didn’t hang out with were still kind of his friends. That’s what happened when you grew up with the same hundred or so people. You were in the same classes year after year, and you knew all their crap the way they knew yours.

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