Mudville Read Free Page B

the bottom dresser drawer, which is all sweaters and stuff, and pack them into the suitcase. I don't know what I'll do come winter if he's still here, but it'll do for now. I also clear out a shelf on the bookcase, just by moving things around. I have an extra bed in my room that buddies use when they stay over, so at least that's not a problem. Until one of my buddies wants to stay over, that is.
    I go into the living room when I'm done. Sturgis is still sprawled out on the couch, and Yogi is sprawled out on Sturgis, gingerly rubbing his nose on Sturgis's chin.
    “What happened to his tail?” Sturgis wants to know. Everybody asks that. Yogi doesn't have much of a tail—just a fuzzy little bump. Manx tails are just like that, but people who don't know much about cats think he met with an accident.
    “It's a lucky cat who makes it through life whole.” I usually tell company all about Manx cats when they ask, but maybe Sturgis will feel better thinking he's not the only one with a missing part.
    “He's nice. I never had a cat before.” He smiles at Yogi and scratches his cheeks until Yogi is all squinty-eyed and blissful.
    “So you want to unpack?”
    “Okay.” He gently nudges Yogi aside and gets up. I realize he's taller than me. I'm kind of tall myself, but Sturgis towers over me. It's because he has freakishly long legs, I think. He grabs a couple of department store bags from the corner. For a second, I think he's brought us presents, but then I see they're full of old clothes and stuff. Those paper bags are his luggage.
    “You can put your clothes in the bottom drawer,” I tell him as we go into the bedroom. “Let me know if you need another drawer. I can probably clear one out.” I probably can't, but I want to show off what a good host I am.
    “I'm good for now.” He shoves the bags back into a corner by his bed.
    “I cleared off a shelf, too.”
    “All right. Hey, what's all this?” He walks over to my side of the room and pokes at my trophies a bit. “Are you a star jock or something?”
    “I play baseball. They give out a lot of trophies.” I wish he wouldn't touch them, but I don't say anything.
    “How do you play baseball if it rains all the time?”
    “My buddy Steve and I used to play in Sutton Little League.”
    “You don't play anymore?”
    “Not in Sutton. Steve decided it was too much work, and his dad was my ride.”
    “You don't have room for any more trophies anyway,” he snorts.
    “Do you play?”
    “Nah, not really.” He seems fascinated by the trophies, though, touching them and reading the engravings until my father calls us in to dinner.
    I think of my father's cooking the same way I think of rain and school. I have to live with it, but I don't have to like it. The Spam manicotti does nothing to change my mind. Sturgis gobbles it right up, though. What's worse, he forks the whole mess into a mush and mixes it with the spinach, eating it with four or five slices of garlic bread and washing it all down with about a quart of milk.
    “You like that, eh, Stuey?” my dad asks.
    “It's okay,” Sturgis says through a mouthful of food. I figure he just hasn't had a meal in about two months.
    “So …” My dad rubs his hands expectantly. “Are you going to tell us about baseball camp? Did I hear something about a trophy?”
    “You know, they give out a lot of trophies.” I really don't want to come off as a bragger, especially in front of Sturgis. I don't even know if I like him yet, but I do want him to like me.
    The three of us lapse into a silence, and I wonder if any-one will tell me the whole story about how Sturgis got hurt, and how he became an emergency situation, and what happened to his parents, and why he doesn't have anybody else to take him in, and exactly how it became my problem. There's just the clattering of forks on plates, though.
    “I don't know what I'm going to do the rest of the summer,” I say instead. “Maybe play summer basketball? Do you