Almost Lost by Beatrice Sparks Read Free Book Online Page A

me.
    â€œOn the fourth day I was still looking pretty scary and feeling pretty awful, but I put on my dark glasses and forced myself to go back to school. I couldn’t let Slice and Thing and the others in the gang think I was a white, wisp wasp. Besides, my family was driving me crazy, pushing me closer and closer to doing something really demented. I knew Mom had called Grandma to come and just baby-sit me, and I couldn’t handle that. I simply could not!
    â€œIt was great getting back to school. The gang accepted me as though I had always been a member. We joked and pushed and threatened each other in the halls, when no one was watching. Sometimes even when people were watching. They knew we knew who the watchers were, and they’d get theirs if they dared to tell. I related to my bros’ feelings as hostile, unacceptable misfits, kids who had been cast,through no fault of their own, into outer darkness, where they were simply trying desperately to find their own turf, to be respected, to belong. I don’t think adults have any idea how important it is to a kid to feel they belong to something. Sometimes anything!… It’s like…a… when you’re dying from thirst, you’ll drink from a mud hole .
    â€œAlmost immediately the gang became my security, my family, my life. We were one. One for all and all for one just like in the old Three Musketeers book I had read as a naive kid. But with us it really worked. They weren’t just words. They were actions! If any of the other kids dared give us lip or even a demeaning look, they were well aware of the price they would pay. The whole school was in our hands, and they paid us respect with a capital R, like we demanded. We were lucky we were the only gang in the school. Other schools had more, and they were constantly warring with each other. With us it was just keeping everyone else paying homage.
    â€œOne weekend Slice suggested that on Monday every student at school genuflect to us. We got the message out to a few on-the-top-of-the-heap kids, and by the next hall time all the kids that passed us bowed their heads and bent their knees noticeably—even Chicken Little, the big bruiser football star, who had had it whispered to him that his legs wouldn’t be usable for the big game on Friday if he didn’t follow the policy. His head barely bowed, and his knees barely bent, but he still showed that he recognized our power. It was a rush. His dad was the mayor, and still even he knew where his nuts were stored. Wow! What action! What adrenaline! What power! What respect!” Sammy’s hand flew to hisforehead. “I can’t believe this, but for a moment I was reliving the experience.”
    â€œHow did that make you feel?”
    â€œLike I’m two people, the then person and the now person.” He looked scared. “Is it possible that I have multipersonalities?”
    â€œNo, but it should show you how powerfully concepts can control actions and thinking. It’s like kids who are working their way through drug therapy programs having flashback highs just from allowing past abnormal destructive thought to control their normal presents.”
    â€œWill this go on forever? Anytime I’m feeling down a little about something, or I’m hurt or beaten at something, like tennis or soccer, or Mom rags at me or the kids bug me, am I going to revert back to my old gang mentality?”
    â€œNot if you dump it completely after you’ve gotten it all out of your head and system, and you don’t forever, or ever , go back to that toxic place to wallow.”
    â€œHow am I going to do that?”
    â€œWe’ll work on it after every last drop of rage, indulgence, negativity, pessimism, and venomous self-justification are purged out of your system.”
    He snickered. “Purged? You mean something like a mental enema?”
    â€œI wouldn’t have put it quite that way, but it is an