Welcome to Fred (The Fred Books) by Brad Whittington Page B

and his voice changed slightly. Kind of like the way it does in a Western where someone says, “Not from around these here parts, are ye, boy?” and the next thing you know, they’re looking for a rope.
    “Well, not really,” I corrected hastily. “I’m from Fort Worth, but we lived in Ohio for a few years.”
    “Oh.”
    “Yeah.” We lapsed into an awkward silence, the noise from the playground suddenly seeming very loud. “You’re from here, aren’t you?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Yeah, I thought so.”
    “Yeah.”
    Silence, again. I looked past Turtle-Head to the school, a redbrick building built on a hill. A wide set of concrete steps descended from the middle toward the highway. On the left a circular driveway met a door at ground level. The hill sloped down to the right, leaving the windows ten feet above the ground at the other end, where a covered walkway led to a white frame building at the edge of a pine wood. Fifty yards into the woods, a creek marked the bottom of the hill. The woods continued up the other side toward the church, redbrick and white steeple barely visible between the trees.
    I tried to jump-start the conversation. “So, what’s your name?”
    “Ralph.”
    “Ralph.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Oh.”
    The silence seemed to be relentless. It was finally broken by Ralph.
    “Want some Red Man?” He dug in a pocket.
    “What?”
    “Red Man.” He held out a crumpled red-and-white pouch.
    “I don’t know. What is it?”
    Ralph froze for a second and looked to see if I was serious. “Chewin’ tobacca.”
    “Oh.” I stared at the brown shreds dangling from his fingertips. “No, I don’t think so.”
    He shrugged and crammed the tobacco in his mouth. “Suit yerself.” He rolled up the pouch, crammed it back into his pocket, and looked around.
    Three kids were bouncing a red ball against the wall to the right of the steps, the metallic whang sounding like the ricochet of a bullet. Further up the hill, a circle of boys huddled around a circle of marbles. I looked toward the trees between the school and the highway. Playground equipment was scattered on a bed of pine needles and sand.
    On the monkey bars a girl hung upside down, chunky thighs and calves hooked over a bar. Her brown ponytail dragged in the dirt, and two pudgy hands gripped her plaid skirt in a halfhearted attempt at modesty. Large pink panties were plainly visible fore and aft. She was staring directly at me; her inverted smile, filled with crooked teeth the size of piano keys, hung over her large nose like a bad moon rising over Stone Mountain. A Milky Way of freckles blazed a trail across the sky of her face. Even upside down it was evident that this was a girl who had taken homeliness to a level I had never considered possible. The mind boggled. Or at least mine did, as an involuntary shudder ran through my frame.
    Ralph followed my gaze. “That’s Thelma Perkins. Don’t pay her no mind.” He spat carelessly into the dirt. “I done kissed her last year.”
    I looked at her mouth, teeth pointed crazily like vandalized headstones in a neglected graveyard.
    “Where?” I asked in fascinated horror.
    “Behind the lunch room. Twict.” He offered the information in such a matter-of-fact tone that I was at a loss as to how to interpret it. Was he bragging? Warning me to stay away from his property? Giving me a hot tip straight from the stable? Or compulsively cleansing his soul of foul deeds committed in a moment of passion via confession to a stranger?
    I felt obliged to offer some response. Gagging, while appropriate, seemed inadvisable. The best I could muster was a vague, “Ah.”
    “Now that one,” he said, spitting in the direction of a scrawny black-haired girl on the top of the monkey bars, “I wouldn’t mess with her. She’ll punch you right in the gut.”
    “Right.” I took note of her features, adding her to the list of girls to avoid on the off chance I were to launch a kissing rampage in this strange land.