Read Online Short People by Joshua Furst - Free Book Online Page B

climbed on the tower. And we made floors on every square so it could be three floors tall. And we made railings so you can’t fall off. And a ladder too, so you could get up there. It was like sixty feet big, and it was way cooler than the one in the Boy Scout manual.
    After we made the Expo one, Jake climbed all the way to the top before anybody else could even get there and then he shouted, “I’m king of the lookout tower, hear me roar!” and then he roared and it was really loud all over the gym and everybody shut up and looked at him, so he walked around and roared some more and stuff, and then he raised his arms like a World Wrestling champion except his gold belt was pretend. Mr. Schultz was getting all mad and walking back and forth and stuff, so Jake grabbed on to the metal beam things on the roof of the gym and swung on them like he was gonna do the monkey bars all the way across to the bleachers. After that, Mr. Schultz climbed up and made Jake get down right now so we could do rope making and knot tying like we were supposed to. When Jake was back off the tower, everybody told him how cool he was and everything, and he got even tougher, like even more cool.
    For like three hours at the Expo I had to tie knots on the second floor. It got so boring cause I only know about five knots and I had to do them over and over again and none of the people who were supposed to look at us tying knots were looking at us anyway. There were like a hundred and fifty troops in the gym all doing different things, and except for our tower, what we were doing was the most boring of any of them—everybody already knows how to tie knots. There was this one thing that looked cool that I wanted to go see, this troop had this big glass jar with all kinds of chemicals and stuff in it and they had this thing that spun around and pulled string out of the chemicals even though there wasn’t any string in them. I wanted to go look at that, but we weren’t allowed to cause we had to just tie knots all day.
    After I got bored, I made a noose though. I took this like thirty-foot-long rope and tied a great big huge noose on one end and I made the other end into a pile so I could hold it on the other side of the railing. Then I put the noose around my waist really tight, and held on to the rope and jumped off the edge of the tower. It was so cool cause I could pull myself up and down with the other part of the rope and everybody was watching me and stuff. But when Mr. Schultz saw, he started screaming at me that I was gonna break my neck—pretty stupid, cause the noose was around my waist and even if I fell, I wasn’t very high up or anything. He made me get down and not go on the tower again for the rest of the day cause it was such a baby thing to do what I did. Like I’m a Webelos or something. Jake gave me a high five, though, and then I got to go look at that spinny thing with the chemicals, so that was good. The people explained that the chemicals mix up with each other and when they touch the air they turn into nylon, like morphing or something. Pretty trippy.
    Anyway, it wasn’t a big deal or anything. Even though I did the thing with the noose, the Expo gave our tower first prize. That’s why we got to build one in the middle of Elkhart Lake for the Jamboree . . .
    When Jake went camping before, there was this bunch of high school kids in the spot next to his mom and dad’s camper and they had this watermelon that they’d cut a hole in and poured in like a ton of vodka so it got all mixed up with the watermelon. If you do that, you get drunker without even tasting it. Jake partied with them every day and one night, he even got to put his hand down this one girl’s underpants and feel around in there and he stuck his finger in her thing. He let me smell the finger, but I couldn’t smell anything except cigarettes cause Jake smokes and stuff with Chewy. And the girl let him do that to her even though she’s like a senior and a