Read Online Cartoonist by Betsy Byars - Free Book Online Page B

hadn’t looked up at his cartoons. He felt like stone.
    He imagined himself in a park, high on a pedestal, far above the world. No matter what happened around him he would remain unmoving at his table, hands folded. Pigeons would flap around his head, light on his shoulders. Children would throw stones at them, hitting him. The statue would remain perfect. Muggings would take place in his shadow. Babies would teeter, fall, and cry. Girls would play games of tag around him. Only at night, like this, when the world got quiet, would the statue begin to soften. He closed his eyes. He became stone again.

Chapter Eleven
    “H EY, ALFIE!”
    Alfie’s eyes snapped open. He blinked. He lifted his head, turtlelike, and looked around the dusky attic. It was morning and there was no sunlight. The attic was as empty and cheerless as a stage waiting for props.
    “Alfie, you ready for school?” Tree called. Alfie knew he was outside, standing at the edge of the steps. “Hey, Alfie!” he called again, louder.
    Alfie waited with his hands folded on the table as if he were holding a small bunch of invisible flowers.
    “Tree, would you come in the house a minute, please,” Alfie’s mother said at the front door. She had just gotten out of bed, and Alfie knew she would be standing in the doorway, clutching her peacock-blue bathrobe around her.
    “Isn’t Alfie ready for school?” Tree asked anxiously. “I can’t be late again, Mrs. Mason, because I’ve already been late nine times, and if you’re late ten times you have to write a composition.”
    “Just step inside for a second, Tree.”
    “Compositions aren’t my thing.” He entered, feet dragging. He looked around the living room. “Where is Alfie? He’s not still in bed, is he? Look, Mrs. Mason, if he’s still in bed—”
    “Tree, Alfie’s up in the attic,” his mother said in a serious voice, “and I want you to help me get him down.”
    “ Where is he?”
    “In the attic.”
    Alfie could imagine his mother pointing up to the trap door, holding her bathrobe closed with one hand. He could see Tree’s face lifted, puzzled, looking at the square door.
    “He went up yesterday,” his mother explained, “and he won’t come down.”
    There was a pause. Then Tree said in an awed voice, “That’s weird, Mrs. Mason.”
    Alfie recognized that as one of Tree’s greatest insults. “He’s weird, Alfie, sang a solo in the Christmas pageant. Oh, holeeeeeee night!” Or, “She’s really weird, Alfie, toe-dances.” Or, ‘Yeah, but somebody told me he plays the fife. He’s weird, Alfie.”
    And now he, Alfie, had joined the group. Drawing cartoons was bad enough, he thought, but locking himself in the attic really clinched it. “He’s weird,” Tree would tell everyone, “locked himself in the attic.”
    “Well, you know how he is, Tree,” his mother said. “He just does things without thinking. Anyway, I thought maybe if you called to him, he’d come down and you could walk to school together.”
    “Well, I don’t know. I could try.” Tree cleared his throat. “Alfie, you want to walk to school with me?” He waited, then said in a lower voice, “I don’t think he wants to, Mrs. Mason.”
    “Call again … please.”
    “Alfie, you going to school?” He paused, and then his voice began to pick up speed with his enthusiasm. “Listen, the reason I came by this morning is because Lizabeth and me are having a kind of war—it’s not going to be anything violent, Mrs. Mason,” he added quickly, “it’s just going to be one of those boys against the girls things—like Challenge of the Sexes on television. Anyway, Alfie, we worked it out last night. It’s going to be five different contests. And it’s you against Zeenie in—get this!—bowling! And Zeenie’s lousy too, Alfie. Half the time her ball never even gets to the pins. I mean, if it goes all the way down there, she’s proud. Gutter balls are her specialty.”
    Tree swallowed, almost