Read You Will Call Me Drog for Free Online

crybaby? This is too much.”
    Fresh anger stopped my tears. “What do you mean
you’re
stuck with
me
? If you don’t like it, at least
you
can do something about it!”
    “Think so? Haul your head out of the wishing well now, Boy, and blow your nose. I don’t care to lie around listening to you snivel and regurgitate.”
    I wanted to blow my nose all right. On him.
    “Hmmm,” he went on. “What could we do that would be exciting? Maybe we should get involved with something ... illicit. A smuggling operation perhaps. Not guns, of course—too messy. Diamonds, rhinoceros horns, art objects, that sort of thing. You meet the most interesting people.”
    “Smuggling? In Ferrisburg?”
    Drog sighed. “You have a point. How can you bear to live here, thousands of miles from the bounding main? From anywhere, actually. Oh, If only you knew the adventures I’ve had! I assume you’ve heard of the mysterious Ruby Yacht of Omar Khayyam?”
    It did sound kind of familiar, but I didn’t know where from.
    “The Ruby Yacht would have been the eighth wonder of the world if it hadn’t disappeared. That boat had a will of its own, never liked to stay long in one place. I am proud to say it was once my privilege to ... liberate it.”
    Oh great. Another story, with Drog the hero.
    “I was then in the employ of a sultan who coveted that fabled yacht more than life itself. But at the time it belonged to Omar Khayyam of Persia. My job was to distract Omar with stories while the sultan’s agents bribed the crew with gold and sailed Omar’s gleaming white pleasure boat, its deck and masts studded with Burmese rubies, away in the dark of night.
    “When we presented the ruby yacht to the sultan, he ordered a great feast and entertained us with dancing girls, hundreds of them. What a night! But the sultan himself only wanted to spend time on the yacht, sailing it back and forth on his private lake. Then one day he died. And the next day the yacht vanished.”
    “What happened to it?”
    “Who knows? Perhaps it is roaming the world still. Shall we go in search of it?”
    I looked him in the eye. “Did you take it, Drog?”
    “Would I be here talking to you if had? No, the sultan lost interest in puppets long before he died—”
    “So he gave you to the emir, right?”
    “You have too good a memory, Boy. But perhaps ... Ferrisburg also has some dancing girls?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “You don’t think so. Must Drog play with puppies, then? What sorry fortune. I might be content if I could have dancing girls.”
    And maybe you’d shut up for a while.
    I leaned over to the computer. “Wait,” I said. “Let me type in ‘dancing girls’ and see what happens.”
    “I don’t want to write to them, Boy. I want to watch them.”
    “Shhh.”
    I couldn’t believe what popped up on the screen. Eight squares like windows, and in each one a naked lady shaking her behind all over the place. You couldn’t see their heads.
    “Aha!” Drog said.
    But they were animations, not real people. After a while everything repeated and you could tell which way they were going to move next. It got boring. Even Drog thought so.
    “Let’s see some real dancing girls,” he said.
    I checked on the links. Go-go. Hootchy-kootchy. I clicked on Belly Dance.
    “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Drog said as pictures of long-haired women with bare middles and sparkling tops and skirts came on the screen. “Let’s see them dance.”
    But we couldn’t. They wanted you to order a belly-dancing video for $14.99, so the site just had photos. I switched back to the naked bottoms. I didn’t hear Mom come to the doorway.
    “Parker, what on earth are you looking at?”
    I closed out as fast as I could and jammed Drog into my pocket. “Um, nothing, Mom.”
    She sat down on the edge of my bed. “Parker, I need to talk to you.”
    “Sorry, Mom. That was kind of an accident. I won’t watch that stuff again.”
    “It’s not that,” she