Read Online When I Was Five I Killed Myself by Howard Buten - Free Book Online Page B

was a stampede, they were all yelling. Miss Iris came too, she was running. I have never seen Miss Iris run before, it looked wrong. Miss Hellman and Miss Craig came too. Hellman grabbed me on the arm and started to shake me. Then Jessica turned around.
    â€œMiss Hellman, didn’t you say we could all get ice cream when we got to the refreshment stand? It’s right there. Can we?”
    All the children started singing “We want ice cream, we want ice cream!” and they pulled on Miss Hellman till she let go of me. “All right,” she said.
    They went. Everyone had ice cream except Jessica and me. She was leaning on a sign, looking at the elephants. The sign said
    DON’T MISS OUR
    RIB-TICKLING ELEPHANT SHOW
    AT 4PM AND 5:30!
    It was hot. I looked at the elephants, they made dust when they walked, there were three of them. They were all gray and dried up and cracked. They moved in slow motion back and forth back and forth. Then two of them moved backwards and the middle one turned in a circle. Then they all went forwards,then they all went backwards. It was so slow it seemed like weeks.
    (I was going to give the call, and they would wake up and carry me off to the jungle, but I didn’t.)
    Behind us the whole third grade was talking and eating ice cream and getting yelled at.
    Jessica stood next to me. “Look at the elephants, Randy,” she said.
    â€œMy name isn’t really Randy,” I said.
    â€œI know,” she said.
    And we stood there next to each other. The elephants went back and forth back and forth.
    Jessica said, “Look, Burt, they are doing their elephant show in their sleep. They’re sleeping, but they can’t stop.”
    Miss Iris didn’t sit next to me on the bus ride home. She sat next to Marty Polaski.

[10]
    O N THE WAY HOME FROM SCHOOL AFTER THE ZOO I GOT in a fight with Harold Lund. He is a big grease who is friends with Marty Polaski. He ambushed me, which is dirty fighting, man, and jumped on me and pinned me with his knees on my shoulders till Shrubs smashed him in the head with a garbage can and we both ran home.
    When I got home the first thing my mom said was “Don’t open up your mouth,” because my pants were green on the knees from the grass. (They were new, I got them at West’s Clothing where they don’t have doors on the little rooms and a girl saw my underpants.) “It’s a crime,” said my mother. “Who beat you up this time?”
    â€œThe Jehovah’s Witnesses,” I said.
    â€œWhat?”
    I walked away. She chased me and grabbed my arm.
    â€œTell me the truth, young man,” she said.
    So I told her. I got run over by a car which was drove by a Jehovah’s Witness and he got out and said I wasn’t a Jehovah’s Witness but I said I was, only he didn’t believe me and then we had to arm wrestle and I beat him because he was weak and then a negro came and said I could be a negro if I wanted so I said ok and then the Jehovah’s Witness got mad and pushed me on the grass and then I came home.
    I walked upstairs to my room. My mom yelled, “You get back down here and tell me the truth.” But I didn’t.
    (I don’t know what Jehovah’s Witnesses is. I think it’s when you wear a sport jacket.)
    I sat on my bed and picked up somebody. Monkey Cuddles, he was waiting for me. He said he saw out the window and it was me who beat up Harold Lund, not Shrubs. I threw my pants down the clothes chute, it is in Jeffrey’s room behind the door. It is a little door like the milk chute only it goes down the basement for dirty clothes. I wish I could go down the clothes chute but I am too large. And my pants didn’t go down. They got stuck halfway, you could hear. So I had to throw a book down it which is how you unplug the clothes chute. I went into my drawer to get Learn to Spell, Book I , which I kept in my dresser to study for the Spelling B.
    Only it