for your
letter. The Youth Board got me a room in the Y on Twenty-third Street.
Maybe I'll come say Hello some day. They're going to help me get a job
this summer, so I don't need a lawyer. Thanks anyway. Meow to Cat. Best,
Tom."

I go over to Nick's house to show him the letter. I'd told him about Tom
getting Cat out of the cellar and getting arrested, but Nick always acted
like he didn't really believe it. So when he sees the letter, he has to
admit Cat and I really got into something. Not everyone gets letters from
guys who have been arrested.

One thing about Nick sort of gripes me. He has to think up all the plans.
Anything I've done that he doesn't know about, he downgrades. Also, I
always have to go to _his_ house. He never comes to mine, except once in a
coon's age when I have a new record I won't bring to his house because his
machine stinks and he never buys a new needle.

It's not that I don't like his house. His mom is pretty nice, and boy, can
she cook! Just an ordinary Saturday for lunch she makes pizza or real good
spaghetti, and she has homemade cookies and nut cake sitting around after
school. She also talks and waves her arms and shouts orders at us kids,
but all good-natured-like, so we just kid her along and go on with what
we're doing.

She's about the opposite of my mom. Pop does the shouting in our house,
and except for the one hassle about bike-riding on Twelfth Avenue, Mom
doesn't even tell me what to do much. She's quiet, and pretty often she
doesn't feel good, so maybe I think more than most kids that I ought to do
things her way without being told.

Also, my mom is always home and always ready to listen if you got
something griping you, like when a teacher blames you for something you
didn't do. Some kids I know, they have to phone a string of places to find
their mother, and then she scolds them for interrupting her.

Mom likes to cook, and she gets up some good meals for holidays, but she
doesn't go at it all the time, the way Nick's mother does. So maybe Nick
doesn't come to my house because we haven't got all that good stuff
sitting around. I don't think that's it, really, though. He just likes to
be boss.

One day, a couple of weeks after we went to Coney, he does come along with
me. We pick up a couple of cokes and pears at his pop's store.

Cat is sitting on my front stoop, and he jumps down and rubs between my
legs and goes up the stairs ahead of us.

"See? He knows when s