Guy Wire Read Free Page A

flat against his shirtfront. His shoes were the lace-up kind, and they were two-toned—brown on the toes and heels and white on the sides. He had a white handkerchief sticking out of his jacket pocket. I repeat, a handkerchief . His pale face was splattered with a fistful of muddy freckles, and it was hard to tell what color his hair was because it was parted in the middle and flattened down on his head like a dark, wet helmet.
    “Class, this is our new student, Fennimore Adams.”
    There was total silence. Then Kevin Brudhauser, the official class bully, spoke up. “What planet are you from?” he asked, grinning and looking around for approval as some of the other kids laughed.
    “Fennimore comes to us all the way from Tennessee, Kevin,” she said, giving Kev such an evil eye that it wiped the mean smile right off his face. “From a town called…” She hesitated as she tried to remember the name.
    The boy piped up: “Pigeon Forge, Ma’am. It’s south of Knoxville a piece.”
    When he spoke, a couple of the kids snickered, because he had a thick southern accent that made his words sound strange and twangy.
    Mrs. Hunn went on to say the usual stuff about how she expected us all to give him a warm Cedar Springs welcome and show him the ropes until he was comfortable in hisnew surroundings. I just kept looking at that candy-cane-striped tie and those shoes and thinking, It’s a good thing geekiness isn’t contagious, because this kid could be fatal .
    “Guy, I would like you to be Fennimore’s lunch buddy today,” Mrs. Hunn said.
    Oh, man , I groaned to myself. Why me?
    Then she turned to Fennimore and asked, “Did you bring lunch from home, dear, or will you be wanting hot lunch today?”
    “My mama packed a lunch for me today, thank you kindly, Ma’am.”
    His mama? Ma’am? Why did I have to be his lunch buddy? Couldn’t somebody else do it? It was bad enough that my mother packed me the weirdest lunches in the whole world. Now I had to eat my weird lunch with the weird new kid.
    When the lunch bell rang, I shuffled slowly over to Fennimore’s desk and waited while he put away his binder and spelling book.
    “Come on,” I said, when he was finally ready. I led him down the hall to the cafeteria, walking a little in front of him just so nobody would get the wrong idea and think we were friends.
    “This cafeteria smells exactly the same as the one back in Pigeon Forge,” he said when we walked through the doors.
    “Uh-huh,” I said without looking at him.
    “Wanna hear my theory?” he asked.
    I shrugged.
    “I think there is this huge underground cave somewhere full of lady robots with hair nets and big moles on their chins. They program them to mix up giant vats of disgusting stuff like barbecued beef and pour it into big barrels. Then they load the barrels onto planes and drop them out of the sky like big beef bombs, splat! into cafeterias across the country.”
    I laughed. Even though it was hard to look at Fennimore in that ridiculous suit and feel anything other than pity for him, I had to admit, those barbecue beef bombs were pretty funny.
    “I don’t eat hot lunch,” I said. “My mother packs mine.”
    “Mine too,” he said with a smile, holding up his blue lunch box.
    We sat down at a table near the door and put our lunch boxes out on the table in front of us. I watched as Fennimore opened his. He pulled out a peanut butter and jelly sandwich cut into two neat triangles, a box of apple juice, and a banana.
    “I always used to trade with my best friend, George, back in Pigeon Forge,” he said.
    “Oh,” I said. But I didn’t open my box. I was thinking about two things. One, I was trying to imagine what George was like. Probably some polite little nerd in a dorky suit. And two, I was trying to avoid having to show Fennimore what was in my lunch box.
    “Do you like to trade?” he asked, leaning over toward me and reaching for my lunch box. “Let’s see whatcha got.”
    “No,”