Read Welcome to Fred (The Fred Books) for Free Online Page A

and disappeared back inside the door like a Frau in a cuckoo clock. I stared at the lemonade. She popped back out again with a wet dishrag and slapped it against my forehead. “Here, hold this on.” I was sitting on the swing, lemonade in one hand and a dishrag in the other, when M came running up the sidewalk to the porch, leading Mom, Heidi, and Hannah. I was attempting to explain what had happened, pointing at my shoe with the dishrag—which Mrs. Puffy-Screechy kept pushing back up to my forehead—when an ambulance appeared. The technicians jumped out, popped open the back door, and pulled out a gurney.
    “I’m OK. I can walk,” I hollered and jumped up from the swing, spilling the lemonade.
    “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, he’s going to faint,” the harpy cried and grabbed me. I jerked away and stumbled down the stairs. M caught me. “Whoa, man,” he said. “Take it easy. I’ll just hang right here with you.”
    The assembled masses decided I should be x-rayed to make sure I wasn’t harboring a fatal wound like a secret grudge with which to accuse them later. As they ushered me toward the ambulance, I heard a familiar voice cry “Hey!” and I looked up. Dad was headed toward us, looking from the ambulance to the mail truck to the bike and to me. He was covered head-to-foot with soot from the furnace, a slightly overdone Pillsbury doughboy.
    Dotson paused inside his cloud of cigar smoke and spread his arms, looking up. “Now what?”
    “Hey,” Dad repeated, gesturing with his glasses toward me in the middle of the crowd. “That’s my boy you got there.” He looked like Malcom X’s brother Y, the short one with the gland problem.
    The ambulance driver looked at dark, short, and dumpy Dad and then at M standing next to me, also dark, short, and dumpy. “No, sir, your boy is just fine. It’s this one we’re taking to x-ray.” He took me by the shoulders and lifted me into the front seat of the ambulance. I still held the dishrag in my hand.
    “No, no, that’s my boy,” Dad said, following the ambulance along as it pulled away, looking like an escapee from a minstrel show. I could hear Mrs. Puffy-Screechy wailing, “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness” from her yard.
    “It’s OK, mister. We’re just going to give him an x-ray,” the driver said, and rolled up his window. He looked over at me. “Was that your dad?”
    I looked back and nodded.
    He shrugged, looked out the window, and looked back at me. “Do you want to hear the siren?”
    I nodded. And we went to the hospital.

    Later that evening I sat in my room under house arrest, charged with unauthorized removal of Heidi’s bike from the premises. Heidi was given exclusive custody of my bike until I could earn enough money to repair or replace hers. I was reading Tom Sawyer. A dark, round head appeared around the door.
    “You conscious, man?”
    “Yes, but grounded.”
    “That’s what I figured.” M walked in and pulled a flashlight out of his back pocket. We padded lightly up the attic stairs to the secret alcove and sat next to the window, M pointing the flashlight to the ceiling between us. It cast a soft light with heavy shadows around us. “So, what happened at the hospital? Did you have brain surgery?”
    “No, just an x-ray.”
    “Did they find a brain?”
    “Ha. Very funny. They said I have a concussion.” I had no idea what a concussion was, but it sounded impressive, so I was glad to have one since I had no bandages to show I’d been to the hospital.
    “Wow! A concussion! Does it hurt?”
    “Not yet. I’ll let you know if I feel anything coming on.”
    “Just think, man, if I hadn’t been there, you’d probably be dead right now.”
    “What?” I hadn’t considered this theme and wasn’t particularly pleased with its introduction.
    “Think about it. What was the difference between you hittin’ the side of the truck or being in front of the truck? Maybe a second? A second and a half?”
    I replayed the