Zero’s condition continued to improve.
Stanley slowly peeled an onion. He liked eating them one layer at a time.
The water hole was now almost as large as the holes he had dug back at Camp Green Lake. It contained almost two feet of murky water. Stanley had dug it all himself. Zero had offered to help, but Stanley thought it better for Zero to save his strength. It was a lot harder to dig in water than it was in a dry lake.
Stanley was surprised that he himself hadn’t gotten sick—either from the sploosh, the dirty water, or from living on onions. He used to get sick quite a lot back at home.
Both boys were barefoot. They had washed their socks. All their clothes were very dirty, but their socks were definitely the worst.
They didn’t dip their socks into the hole, afraid to contaminate the water. Instead they filled the jars and poured the water over their dirty socks.
“I didn’t go to the homeless shelter very often,” Zero said. “tust if the weather was really bad. I’d have to find someone to pretend to be my mom. If I’d just gone by myself, they would have asked me a bunch of questions. If they’d found out I didn’t have a mom, they would have made me a ward of the state.”
“What’s a ward of the state?”
Zero smiled. “I don’t know. But I didn’t like the sound of it.”
Stanley remembered Mr. Pendanski telling the Warden that Zero was a ward of the state. He wondered if Zero knew he’d become one.
“I liked sleeping outside,” said Zero. “I used to pretend I was a Cub Scout. I always wanted to be a Cub Scout. I’d see them at the park in their blue uniforms.”
“I was never a Cub Scout,” said Stanley. “I wasn’t good at social stuff like that. Kids made fun of me because I was fat.”
“I liked the blue uniforms,” said Zero. “Maybe I wouldn’t have liked being a Cub Scout.”
Stanley shrugged one shoulder.
“My mother was once a Girl Scout,” said Zero. “I thought you said you didn’t have a mother.” “Everybody has to have a mother.”
“Well, yeah, I know that.”
“She said she once won a prize for selling the most Girl Scout cookies,” said Zero. “She was real proud of that.”
Stanley peeled off another layer of his onion.
“We always took what we needed,” Zero said. “When I was little, I didn’t even know it was stealing. I don’t remember when I found out. But we just took what we needed, never more. So when I saw the shoes on display in the shelter, I just reached in the glass case and took them.”
“Clyde Livingston’s shoes?” asked Stanley.
“I didn’t know they were his. I just thought they were somebody’s old shoes. It was better to take someone’s old shoes, I thought, than steal a pair of new ones. I didn’t know they were famous. There was a sign, but of course I couldn’t read it. Then, the next thing I know everybody’s making this big deal about how the shoes are missing. It was kind of funny, in a way. The whole place is going crazy. There I was, wearing the shoes, and everyone’s running around saying, ‘What happened to the shoes?’ ‘The shoes are gone!’ I just walked out the door. No one noticed me. When I got outside, I ran around the corner and immediately took off the shoes. I put them on top of a parked car. I remember they smelled really bad.”
“Yeah, those were them,” said Stanley. “Did they fit you?” “Pretty much.”
Stanley remembered being surprised at Clyde Livingston’s small shoe size. Stanley’s shoes were bigger. Clyde Livingston had small,
quick feet. Stanley’s feet were big and slow.
“I should have just kept them,” said Zero. “I’d already made it out of the shelter and everything. I ended up getting arrested the next day when I tried to walk out of a shoe store with a new pair of sneakers. If I had just kept those old smelly sneakers, then neither of us would be here right now.”
