Dexter the Tough Read Free Page B

swing—and a miss! Strike one! Can we see the instant replay? Bet you couldn’t do that again if you tried!” But Grandma said in a scared voice, “Are you all right?” And somehow that made Dexter feel worse, like maybe there was something really, really wrong with him. Had Dad’s problems started with him falling down?
    â€œI’m fine,” Dexter told Grandma fiercely, as he jumped back up. His ankle hurt now, and he’d banged his elbowhard. He tried not to limp across the porch.
    Grandma still looked worried.
    â€œI made you a snack,” she said, pushing open the front door. “I remember how your mom and Uncle Ted were always so hungry, getting home from school. Just come on into the kitchen.”
    The snack was graham crackers and canned pears. Dexter looked down at the pears in their slimy syrup and felt his throat starting to close over again.
    â€œDo you have any homework?” Grandma said, sliding into the chair across from him. “Anything you need help with?”
    â€œUh, no,” Dexter said. “I mean, yes, I have some homework. But I don’t need help.”
    Grandma just sat there.
    â€œI can do it by myself,” Dexter repeated. He really, really, really didn’t want Grandma to see the story he’d written, the one he had to rewrite.
    â€œOkay,” Grandma said, inching her chair back. She clutched the table, and pulled herselfup. “I’ll leave you to it, then. I’ll be in the living room watching TV if you need me.” She began to hobble away.
    Dexter waited until she was gone. He heard her heaving herself onto the living room couch. He listened for the TV to come on before he pulled his story out of his backpack. He smoothed it out on the table. He drew a big X through everything he’d written before. Then he put the point of his pencil down directly beneath his teacher’s questions:
    I’m the new kid, he wrote. He started to write, I am tuf again, but it wasn’t worth it if he had to spell the word “t-o-u-g-h.”
    This morning I beat up Robin Bryce. In the bathroom. The one between the office and your classroom. With the blue tile on the wall.
    He looked at the teacher’s questions again. He’d answered everything except “Why did you get in a fight?” He took abreak and spooned one of the slimy pear slices up to his mouth. It slithered down his throat like some tiny animal, a fish or a toad or a lizard. It seemed to be fighting to come back up. Dexter swallowed hard. He chewed a graham cracker that tasted soggy and nasty and old. Maybe it came out of a box that Grandma had kept from when Mom and Uncle Ted were little. Maybe one of them had cried on it. It tasted like tears.
    He pressed his pencil down hard against his paper.
    I was mad , he wrote.

Chapter 5
    D exter put his story back in his backpack. He put the rest of the canned pears in the garbage. He put the box of graham crackers on the counter. He stood in the middle of the kitchen floor wondering what he was supposed to do next.
    â€œHa-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
    Someone on Grandma’s TV show was laughing.
    Dexter tiptoed into the living room. On the TV screen a little girl was standing in front of a whole classroom of other kids, and they were all laughing at her because her mother had used the wrong laundry detergent. Dexterhad seen this commercial before. He used to laugh at it himself. Now he looked over at the couch to see if Grandma was laughing too.
    Grandma had her head tilted back and her eyes closed. Her glasses were practically falling off the tip of her nose. Her mouth hung open, her chin sagging down toward her chest. She wasn’t moving. It didn’t even look like she was breathing.
    Oh, no. What if Grandma was dead?
    â€œGrandma?” Dexter whispered.
    No answer. On the TV screen, the embarrassed girl was replaced by a huge airplane zooming closer and closer. . . .
    â€œGrandma!”