"Jason," he gasped, almost doubling over. "Man, we thought you'd never get home from vacation. Todd and Dave and me, we didn't know what to do. But now that you're back...." He left the sentence unfinished. Suddenly, he wore the relieved look of a tired pitcher who'd just been pulled from a tough game. He straightened, still a head shorter than me even though we were both eleven, and shot the look my way one more time, just to be sure that I hadn't missed it. I flicked his Brooklyn Dodgers cap off his head. "Pull the other one, Ross. You guys have probably been planning this for two weeks." I shook my head. "C'mon—Bela Lugosi in corn country? Is that the best you can do? Isn't it bad enough that my folks dragged me through twenty-two states in fourteen days? And, man, all I've got to show for it is this chintzy knife from Yosemite." I pulled the knife fast enough to make Ross jump (he's a hopeless coward). It wasn't really chintzy, but it wasn't the one I had wanted, either.
