Regular Guy by Sarah Weeks Page A

sniffled.
    â€œPoor baby,” she said softly.
    â€œDead to the world,” my father said as he put his arm around my mother’s shoulders.
    â€œI had to do it,” she said. “It wasn’t easy, but it had to be done.”
    â€œAbsolutely,” said my father as he led her out of the room.
    â€œWhat the heck is going on in there?” I asked Buzz.
    â€œLooks to me like they couldn’t handle the news, went crazy, and offed their only true son. Looks like you got out of there just in the nick of time, Guy,” Buzz said, letting go of the big branch he’d been holding back in order to see in the window. It knocked against the side of the house, letting loose a shower of purple flower petals.
    â€œYou’re nuts,” I said.
    â€œWell, how do you explain it?” he asked.
    â€œI don’t know,” I said, and I noticed that the feeling I’d had before about things going wrong had shot up a notch in my stomach.
    As we crouched by the window looking in at poor Bob-o, I tried to make sense of what was happening to my life. The week before, I had felt completely miserable because I was trapped in the middle of my crazy family. Now I was feeling completely miserable because I felt like an outsider looking in at them. It didn’t help at all that in the short time I’d been away they appeared to have committed a murder, which meant that they were probably going to be carted off to prison and I would be left to live out the rest of my days with the boring old Smiths.
    â€œThis can’t be happening,” I said as I felt my throat closing up and tears beginning to sting my eyes.
    Buzz looked at me and shook his head.
    I turned away from the window and was just about to wipe my eyes on my sleevewhen I got the shock of my life. Standing right behind us was my mother. She was holding a huge knife, and she didn’t look happy at all.
    Buzz turned away from the window, and when he got a load of my mom with that knife pointed at me, he went wild. First of all, he started screaming this really high-pitched scream that didn’t even sound human, and then he threw himself on my mother and knocked her to the ground. The knife went flying out of her hand, skittered between my legs, and disappeared under the bushes.
    â€œRun, Buzz!” I yelled. Buzz and I took off, running like a couple of maniacs down the street to where we had stashed our bikes. We jumped on and rode for our lives without looking back.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    â€œD id you see the size of that knife?” Buzz yelled from behind me. “She’s gone psycho!”
    We were quite a ways from my house before we finally slowed down. Buzz rode up alongside me so we could talk. He was white as a ghost.
    â€œDo you think we ought to call the police?” Buzz asked.
    I tried to answer him, but I was too choked up. I started to bawl.
    â€œWhat am I gonna do?” I wailed. “What am I going to do?”
    â€œDon’t worry, Guy,” Buzz said, trying to comfort me. “We’ll tell somebody and they’llgo over there and take care of it. We can call the police from somebody’s house or maybe we should go back to Bob-o’s house so his folks can help us. Come on.” Buzz turned his bike around and headed off toward North Maple Street.
    â€œI wish I’d never figured this thing out,” I said as I rode along behind Buzz. “Everything could have just stayed the same. Why did I have to be such an idiot and go messing up the family? So what if they were weird? So what if they snorted oysters and decorated lamp shades? We were a family, weren’t we? A perfectly good family, and now everything, everything is ruined.”
    I cried so hard that by the time we reached Bob-o’s house, the whole front of my T-shirt was wet, and a big string of snot was hanging from my nose. Buzz leaned his bike against the garage door and wiped my nose with his shirttail. He