Small Steps - Louis Sachar [14]
“I only stutter when I t-t-t-talk.”
“You were talking.”
“That was math. I’m g-good with numbers. Not w-w-words.”
“Well, you’re pretty smart,” he said.
“And you’re pretty rich.”
“And you’re pretty cute.”
“And you’re pretty pretty.”
She laughed at her own joke.
“What’s so funny?”
“I s-said you were pretty.”
“So?”
“G-girls are pretty. Boys are handsome. That m-means you’re a girl!”
“And you’re pretty silly,” said Armpit.
He noticed a woman watching them from the parking lot of the Stop & Shop. He wondered if she was suspicious because he was with a little white girl. Did she think they were on drugs? Maybe she was memorizing his face, in case it turned out the girl had been abducted.
He stared back at the woman, who then quickly got into her car and drove away.
Or maybe she just enjoyed seeing two people smiling and laughing.
The X-Mobile passed her coming in the other direction.
“There’s X-Ray,” said Ginny.
Not bothering with a U-turn, X-Ray parked facing the wrong way. He slid over to the passenger side, climbed out, then walked around the car.
“Hey, Ginny. You taking good care of Armpit?”
“Yes.”
“So, did you sell the tickets?” Armpit asked.
X-Ray smiled. “See, Ginny, that’s what I like about Armpit. Straight to the point. No bull—” He stopped himself. “No bull.”
“He d-doesn’t like to be called Armpit.”
“I mean it with great respect and affection,” X-Ray said, his hand on his heart.
“Did you sell the tickets?” Armpit asked again.
“Say, Ginny, did I ever tell you what happened to my car?” X-Ray asked, pointing to the big gash in the driver-side door.
“No.”
“I’m driving along Mopac, and this dinosaur leaps out and takes a big bite out of my door! Scared me half to death!”
Ginny laughed.
“Look, do you see the teeth marks?”
Ginny pushed back her glasses on her nose. “Yes.”
“I think it was a T. rex! Can you believe it?”
“No.”
X-Ray laughed.
“So you didn’t sell the tickets, did you?” said Armpit.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” said X-Ray. I was supposed to meet the dude in the parking lot of the H-E-B at five-fifteen. Hey, Ginny, you know what H-E-B stands for?”
“No.”
“Howard E. Butt. Seriously. That was the man’s name. That’s why they just call it H-E-B. Would you want to buy your groceries at a place called Butt’s?”
Ginny cracked up.
Armpit glared at X-Ray.
“Okay, so anyway,” X-Ray continued, “I get there at five o’clock, fifteen minutes early. So then I wait. The guy said he’d be driving a white Suburban. Five-fifteen: no white Suburban. Five-twenty-five. Five-thirty. It’s like a hundred and fifty degrees in the parking lot, but still I wait ’cause I don’t want to let my buddy Armpit down. Finally, at five-thirty-five, I hear this guy screaming out, ‘X-Ray! X-Ray!’ like some kind of maniac. So I give a couple a toot-toots and then this obese vehicle pulls up beside me and two ol’ rednecks get out. ‘Are you X-Ray?’
“‘No, I’m just some dude who happens to have X-Ray on his license plate’—but I don’t say that. I say, ‘Yeah, that’s me,’ and I’m just about to hand over the tickets when he asks, now get this, Ginny, he asks who he should make the check out to.
“I tell him he can make the check out to the tooth fairy for all I care. He goes into this whole riff about losing his ATM card, which was why he was late, but I don’t want to hear it.”
“So you didn’t sell the tickets?” asked Armpit.
“They still want ’em,” said X-Ray. “They’re going to meet me back at the H-E-B at ten tonight. They say they’ll have the cash this time. Only, you better come with.”
“I can’t. I got econ homework, a speech to write—man, I thought you were supposed to do all the work. I just put up the money.”
“They were two big white guys. And there won’t be too many people around at ten o’clock. I just think it’s a good idea to have some backup.”
Armpit didn’t like where this was heading.
“Don’t worry. One look at you and there won’t be any trouble.”
For better or for worse, Armpit knew that was probably true.