Excerpt

2007-06-15T19:37:00.001-07:00

-Excerpt from The Rise of Charlie Drop, by Kevin Teague-

Back then, we ate trash. I know how it sounds, but Henry said tell my life story 'cos people get frustrated with a bunch of loose facts. He's a regular Shakespear, my brother. And since he's letting me tell stories instead of doing homework, I'd better tell it right. And that trash is the first thing I remember about Long Beach.

It was one particular bag of trash that changed things, but I never could have guessed at the time. It looked like all of the other ones. The day Henry brought it home, in the summer of 1991, I was sitting on the couch just finishing this Hardy Boys book. My knees were up and I sort of faced out the window. Henry had just come around the corner from the library, and I heard Lilly yelling at him, so I stepped outside to see what's what.

"I'm gonna count to three!" she shouted when she saw me, but I got inside before she even counted to one.

Lilly didn't like me leaving the house by myself. She thought I would get beat up or something. That's 'cos I was born with what the doctors called strabismus. Or what everybody else just called being really, really cross-eyed. But being cross-eyed isn't super important, not until later.

-Written by my beautiful friend Alecia's husband, Kevin Teague-

funky sock monkey

Excerpt