Read Online The Boy Who Never Grew Up by David Handler - Free Book Online

your head. And how long you could take it.
    There were some bins just inside the door filled with sound and light equipment. Beyond them an empty expanse of pavement until we arrived at the back of some standing sets. The overheads were on here. Sarge slipped through a gap between the sets into the brightness. I followed. We were in Badger Hayes’s living room. There was the big fireplace with the American eagle hanging over it. The two easy chairs, the sofa, the bookcases. There was the stairway leading upstairs to the bedrooms. The entry hall, where Badger’s dad always hung up his coat when he got home from the store, often hollering for Badger. Of course, it didn’t look like it did in the movies. It was smaller, and the stairway led to nowhere, and one wall was missing. That modern, big-screen TV and VCR certainly weren’t the property of the Hayes family. The place was also a complete mess. The coffee table was heaped with video games and candy wrappers and soda cans. A man’s sneakers and dirty socks were strewn around the floor.
    The swinging doors into the kitchen didn’t go to the kitchen. The kitchen was across the stage with the other sets, all of them laid out in a big U like a cul-de-sac. The cheerful kitchen with its gleaming white appliances, where Badger’s mom gaily mopped the floor in her crisp housedress and pearls, hair perfectly coiffed. The garage door with the basketball hoop over it, where Badger and his pals played Horse. The master bedroom, its twin beds separated by the nightstand. And Badger’s own bedroom, with the bunk beds, Homewood High banner, framed photo of President Eisenhower, elaborate chemistry set. His guinea pig cages weren’t there, but a short, chubby woman in her late sixties was, busily picking up the dirty laundry that was heaped about.
    “Now that there’s Bunny,” Sarge murmured to me under her breath. “She’s a real pistol. And she don’t take too well to outsiders. So tread lightly, if you know how.”
    “I don’t.”
    “I noticed.” She started over toward Matthew’s mother, calling out “How’s my Bunny-honey?!”
    Bunny’s face lit up. “Charmaine!” She came over and hugged her tightly, her face disappearing into Sarge’s stomach. “How was the traffic?”
    “Murder,” Sarge replied. “Say hey to Hoagy. He’s the writer helping Matthew with his book.”
    Bunny peered up at me, eyes narrowed behind the oversized black spectacles she wore. “Hello,” she said, her voice guarded.
    “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Wax,” I said.
    Bunny Wax was cute and cuddly and well under five feet tall in her white Reeboks. Daughter Shelley had inherited her size and shape, also her features and coloring, though Bunny’s hair was mostly white now. And she looked a lot feistier. Her chin was worn thrust forward. Her eyes were alert and shrewd. She wore a purple silk camp shirt, white sweatpants, and a ton of jewelry. Her earrings and two of her rings were jade. Her watch and her other rings were gold, as was her charm bracelet, a big, heavy affair made up of as many bunny rabbit charms as could possibly exist in the world. Whenever she moved it clanged around on her wrist like wind chimes.
    She looked me over, her chubby little fists on her hips. She took her time doing it. “What’s with this ‘Mrs. Wax’ business?” she huffed. “You make me sound like some old lady. I’m Bunny.”
    “Okay, Bunny.”
    “That’s better.” She was starting to thaw a couple of degrees—until she caught sight of Lulu ambling over from the dining room. “All right, who let that mutt in here?”
    Lulu let out a low moan. I assured her I could handle it. Then I turned to Bunny and said, “Lulu’s with me. And she is not a mutt.”
    “Why is she with you?” Bunny demanded.
    “We’re a team. We always work together.”
    “I don’t understand that at all,” she fumed, dismissing the whole idea with a wave of her clanging wrist. “What kind of grown man takes his