"Matt Ruff - Bad Monkeys" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ruff Matt)

there was any real risk, theyтАЩd have made me take the bus.

Instead, first day of school, my aunt got me up extra early so IтАЩd be ready when CarlottaтАЩs mom came
by. That was the only time I had second thoughts, when my bedroom door banged open at five a.m. Half
an hour later I was in the car, and by quarter to six Carlotta and I were in front of the school, eating
candy cigarettes with a handful of other early birds.

Around six-fifteen the school librarian showed up. She let us into the building and had us come upstairs to
the library until classes started. Then after final bell, we went back up there and killed time until Felipe
came with his pickup.

Did the school library have Nancy Drew?

A full set. The Hardy Boys and the Bobbsey Twins, too. Carlotta was nuts about the Bobbsey Twins,
which I never gotтАФshe really was a strange girl in a lot of ways.

What about your classes? What were those like?

Boring.

Did you make any other friends?

Not really. I tried to find a bad crowd to fall in with, but Carlotta with her sugar Pall Malls was the
closest thing to a real j.d. that the place had to offer. Most of the other kids, I donтАЩt want to say they
were dumb hicks, but they were dumb hicks. So I stuck with Carlotta, and we made our own fun.

And did this fun include amateur detective work?

Not deliberately. YouтАЩre talking about the janitor, right? Me getting wise to him, that was mostly an
accident.

What happened?

The school was only running at about sixty percent capacity, so to save money, an entire wing of the
building had been closed down. The closed wing was officially off-limits, but of course that was just an
invitation for students to try and break in; Carlotta and I had already talked about getting a crowbar from
the gas station so we could go exploring.
Then one afternoon I was on my way to the bathroom when I saw the janitor open up one of the
connecting doors that led into the closed wing. He went inside and pulled the door shut behind him, but I
didnтАЩt hear him relock it. It seemed like a golden opportunity; I almost ran back to the library to get
Carlotta, but then I thought about it a little more and realized that it was maybe more than one kind of
opportunity.

See, one thing I was definitely missing in Siesta Corta was dope. And it was making me crazy, because I
was in the middle of goddamned farm country, and I knew people had to be growing it. But nobody
would tell me who. Carlotta was no help; the only controlled substance that ever passed her lips was
communion wine, and not much of that. I had higher hopes for Felipe, but when it came to drugs he
turned out to be even more straitlaced than his sister. The one time I tried to raise the subject with him he
just gave me the evil eye.