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Show Why We Cry Butch and Fenn Stories 139 "I won't be! I'm coming!" I call back, but my voice is changed, all throaty, so now she knows for sure. I spend the next five or ten minutes trying to remember exactly how the little book was originally sitting on the bureau. I adjust it around an eighth of an inch at a time trying to get it just right. Then I pick it up again and wipe my fingerprints off the glossy cover, but the towel is wet and leaves a little smear, so I toss it back up on the dresser and try again to turn it around and around so it looks untouched. Then I take it down and check out the female reproductive organs again. I can see the buttocks, but the rest is a terrible puzzle. This time, when I replace it, I see that the cover is bent, so I leave it there all wrong and sit on my bed, sick right through the heart. By this time I don't even want to go to the party. The song on the radio now is, "Who put the bop in the bop-she-bop, she-bop? Who put the ram in the ram-a-ram-a ding-dong?" I sit on my bed and pull on the first pair of long pants I've worn all summer, not counting my baseball uniform. They are one of the strangest pair of pants I've ever worn: my first pair of cordouroys. My mother bought them for me as part of my school clothes. The pants are chocolate brown, and when I stand up in them and brush my hand on the leg, they feel wonderful. I run my new belt with the modest brass C-shaped buckle through the loops. Tucking in my white shirt, rolling |