What Came From the Stars (28 page)

"A Saturday delivery boy for my father."

"A delivery boy?"

She put her hands on her hips and tilted her head. "Fortunately, you don't have to be too smart to do this."

"Why me? I mean, there's got to be a hundred kids in this town you could have asked."

"Because you have to deliver stuff out to the Windermere place and everyone's afraid of her and no one wants to go. But you're new and you don't know anything about that so you seem like the perfect guy. What's your name?"

"Thug," I said.

She tilted her head back again.

"Doug," I said.

"I'm Lil, short for Lily, short for Lillian. So finish your Coke—but don't let your Adam's apple do that thing."

And that's how I got the job as the Saturday delivery boy for Spicer's Deli—five dollars a Saturday, plus tips—which, if you ask me, is pretty impressive for having been in stupid Marysville for only two days. Even my father said I'd done good. Then he added that it was about time I earned my keep around the place. When did I start?

"A week from Saturday," I said.

"If they thought you were any good, they would have started you
this
Saturday," he said.

Terrific.

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Gary D. Schmidt is the bestselling author of
Okay For Now,
the Newbery Honor and Printz Honor book
Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy,
and the Newbery Honor book
The Wednesday Wars.
He is a professor of English at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.