Raising Rufus Read Free Page B

the demonstration went on way longer than it needed to. All he could think was
How long do I have to keep watching this?
    Thankfully, the show came to an end when the rifle suddenly broke off from its mounting.
    “Ah, criminy,” Mr. Fairfield muttered. “Anyway, you get the idea.”
    “What can I say, Ben?” Martin’s dad said. “You’ve done it again.”
    “U-Bag-Em! They’re gonna come all the way from the Twin Cities to play this one. Am I right, Murphy?”
    Martin plastered on a fake grin, though he couldn’t help thinking that people in the Twin Cities—and everywhere else, for that matter—could get a higher level of entertainment right at home on their PlayStations and Xboxes.
    He was saved from having to say something by the breathless approach of a teenage girl in a yellow T-shirt with TROUT PALACE STAFF emblazoned across the front.
    “Mr. Fairfield! One of the beavers got loose and he’s in the restaurant.”
    “So? Catch him.”
    “We can’t find him.”
    Mr. Fairfield rolled his eyes, then grumbled as he headed off with the girl. “Bunch of helpless babies working here…” He made a half turn back to Mr. Tinker. “Fix that gun, will you, pal?”
    “Oh, Ben…” Martin’s dad flipped the football back to Mr. Fairfield.
    “Nah, you keep it. Here y’go, Murphy. Go long.”
    He chucked the ball toward Martin—who ducked out of the way just in time. As the ball bounced down the midway, Mr. Tinker gave him a sour look. Martin looked back at him sheepishly. “I wasn’t ready,” he lied. They both knew his football skills were pretty much nonexistent. He really did wish he were better at it, but somehow he never could relate to that odd-shaped ball. It was a shape better suited for…well, a frozen fossil, for one.
    “Here’s your keys. See ya.” He tossed the keys to his dad and made a quick U-turn.
    As Martin scurried off, fervently hoping to avoid what he knew was coming next, his dad went to retrieve the football. “Hey,” he called after him. “I’ll give you some pointers later. We’ll try a new approach. All right, pal?”
    “Sure thing, Dad,” Martin called back, rounding a corner.
    For now, he’d made his escape. But somehow he knew that “Sure thing” would come back to haunt him.

M elissa Gunders got the first good laugh of the day. All she had to do was stand at the front of the class while her long blond hair slowly rose off her shoulders and stood straight out like a spiky yellow halo. Nothing magical: she had reached this glorified state by resting her hand on a silver ball on top of a thick, cylindrical shaft while Mr. Eckhart, the young science teacher, cranked a handle on its side.
    Amid cackles and hoots from the class, Mr. Eckhart let go of the crank and got down to business. “Okay. Who can explain what’s going on?”
    Everybody had gotten the entertainment value, but obviously not the lesson; no hands went up. Well, actually, there was one hand in the air at the side of the room, near the back. Mr. Eckhart didn’t bother to look.
    “Anybody besides Martin?”
    Martin hated it when he did that. But he understood that Mr. Eckhart was just trying to get everybody else to get their brains out of neutral.
    All the class could come up with, though, was blank stares—until the silence was broken by a loud, raspy voice from the fourth row.
    “She’s holding in a big one.”
    The laughter started right up again, which drew a self-satisfied smirk from the guy who said it, Donald Grimes. Donald was a stocky kid with a buzz cut and a crooked grin who liked to think of himself as the class comedian. To Martin, though, he was nothing but an annoying jerk who picked on him all the time.
    Other kids jumped in with their own theories.
    “A bug flew up her nose.”
    “She’s got really bad head lice.”
    “She’s an alien from Uranus!”
    Martin rolled his eyes. But for the rest of the class, each wisecrack was good for another round of big laughs, and even Mr.