By the time Cecil's ninth birthday arrived, his relationship with Bob had cooled a little, and he moved into what used to be the guest room. The brothers kept to their own spaces most of the time, except under circumstances such as a lost book.
Bob rapped on his brother's door. "Cecil? Do you have my copy of Great Expectations?"
There was no answer, so Bob tried again. "This is serious, Cecil. I need it for school, and I can't find it anywhere."
When there was still no response, Bob decided to just go in and check for himself. He flung open the door and went straight for the bookcase, which was right next to it. His eyes scanned over the spine of each book, checking the titles, but none of them were Great Expectations. Many of the books were joke books, or biographies of Krusty the Clown. Bob found it ridiculous that a single man, and a clown no less, had so many biographies. After all, one's life story could only be told in so many ways. It was fortunate that Dr. Terwilliger and Dame Judith had become about as fed up as Bob with Cecil's obsession with Krusty and clowns in general. They had recently refused to buy any more clown things or Krusty merchandise.
One book in particular caught Bob's attention: a treasury of Ernest Hemingway's short stories. Cecil hated Hemingway's work; Bob often had to put up with Cecil's complaints about Hemingway's writing style, which he considered bland.
Bob's curiosity got the better of him, and he pulled out the book to look inside. It turned out that Cecil had apparently removed the real pages of the book, and slipped the most recent biography of Krusty between the covers. Bob looked around the room and gaped at the huge, ugly poster on the door of Cecil's closet: it depicted Krusty the Clown in all his fake-smiley glory. How could Cecil sleep with that thing staring at him all night?
The closet door groaned and burst open, with an avalanche of wigs, clown suits and shoes, red noses, and seltzer bottles spilling out. Bob groaned.
"Cecil, this hero-worship of Krusty stopped being cute about three years ago. Now it's just disturbing."