Shoebag Returns Read Free

“unless they have a lot of money.”
    “You cannot buy your way into this club!” said Josephine. “You don’t know beans about this club. You don’t know anything about such a secret club!”
    “Why should I?” Stanley answered. “Where I come from clubs are not secret!”
    “But you are here now,” said Josephine. “And here there is one! And the one that there is, is the most important club in Miss Rattray’s School for Girls … and now one boy.”
    “Then possibly I’ll join it,” said Stanley, looking around for someplace to sit where there wasn’t a masked doll in the way.
    “Join it?” said Josephine Jiminez, her eyes narrowing, her skinny body leaning forward. “JOIN IT?” she thundered. Then she let out a hoot of ridicule.
    “I have to go back to my room,” Stanley said, for he realized that he must have said something very laughable, or very sad, or very stupid … and possibly all three.
    As he left the room, Josephine Jiminez was rocking back and forth on her bed filled with masked dolls, stamping her feet, holding tight to her freckled arms, laughing while she tried to exclaim:
    “He thinks … he’s … ha-ha … going to join the Better Club!”

Five
    Y OU HAD TO BE asked to be a member of the Better Club.
    Even Under The Toaster had to laugh at the idea of anyone thinking he could join the Better Club, and Under The Toaster was not a big laugher.
    Father of so many roaches he could not count them all, father of so many roaches he only remembered the ones who’d been felled by fatal accidents, when Under The Toaster did laugh, he roared.
    No one in roachdom wanted him to laugh.
    It was dangerous when he laughed.
    On the rare occasions he was unable to keep from laughing, the yellow kitchen cat roused himself from his sleep and went on the prowl for any cockroaches scurrying around. This sent everyone scampering up walls and into floorboards.
    Drainboard predicted that one day Under The Toaster would die laughing, or else he would be laughing while one of his own died.
    Still, at their late-night picnic beside the hall night-light, Under The Toaster could not help himself.
    “He thinks he can just join that club — har-de-har-har!”
    And a moment after he’d roared at what Stanley Sweetsong had said, he blew a stale bread crumb at Shoebag’s antennae and declared, “Even you were a smarter boy than that one, back when you were Stuart Bagg!”
    “I was not a dumb boy, Papa.”
    But Under The Toaster could not forget, or forgive, that when Shoebag was a boy, he often saved teensy greasy morsels just for Drainboard. What kind of son broke the old roach rule that fathers always ate first and had their pick of choice treats?
    So spitefully, Under The Toaster often teased his son about the time he’d changed into this tiny person.
    “I remember when you were Stuart Bagg. You had to wear clothes!”
    “I liked wearing them, Papa.”
    “But you couldn’t wait to get back to being a roach!”
    “It was not the clothes, though. It was because I missed you and Drainboard, and my brothers and sisters.”
    “Family is everything,” said Under The Toaster. “I am head of the family so I am more than everything!”
    “This is true, Papa,” Shoebag agreed.
    It was Gregor Samsa, a roach once himself, who had given Shoebag the formula to change back to a roach.
    And it was Gregor Samsa who had gone back and forth from roach to human, before he decided to abandon roachdom for stardom.
    Shoebag had never wanted to be a star. Besides missing his family, he had also missed having six legs, a shell, and antennae. He had missed the late-night picnics, like this one, too.
    Still, there were times when he remembered sleeping in a bed, eating at a table, attending school — all the things he’d done when he was a tiny person. And Shoebag wondered at such times if it was possible for him to go back and forth just once more. Gregor Samsa had warned him never to do it without having a good