Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins Read Free Book Online Page A

mean?
P: You know, how people say, “It was meant to be,” or, “It wasn’t meant to be.” Or, “they were meant for each other.”
D: You mean like (singing) “they say for every boy and girl, there’s just one love in this whole world….”
P: Yeah, like that.
D: I don’t know. In one way, it makes you think, “Oh, I don’t have to worry, it’s all taken care of, it will all work out.” But in another way, it’s like, what if your life turns out really lousy, is it supposed to make you feel better that somebody planned that for you? And there’s nothing you can do about it?
P: I think it does make some people feel better. That’s when they say, “God works in mysterious ways.” Although no one wants to be the one He’s working on that way. It makes people feel like there is some really worthwhile reason that they’re having such a crappy life. And like they will be rewarded later.
D: It doesn’t make me feel better. I think sometimes things just happen. And also, I think people can make things happen.
P: I wish I could make myself be taller.
D: Taller? Why?
P: I just want to be closer to eye level. I’m tired of talking to people’s chests. If I were in a movie, I’d have to stand on a box. I’m like a beautiful person who’s been put in a short, pudgy body with frizzy hair.
D: I don’t think of you as short. Or pudgy. And I like your hair. Your hair is perfect on you.
?: I don’t think of me as being short, either. In fifth grade, I was the tallest girl in the class. I was even taller than the boys. But then I stopped growing and everyone passed me up. I still think I’m tall until I look around.
D: You could wear really big platform shoes.
?: I want to. My mom won’t let me buy them. She says I’ll fall and break something.
D: They do look kind of tricky. But people wear them. They look more comfortable than high heels—at least your feet aren’t tilted at such a steep angle—and they seem less tippy.
P: Miss Epler wears them all the time.
D: She’s trying to command authority.
P: She hasn’t learned how yet. She still acts like a human being.
D: What if someone gave you platform shoes as a gift? Would your mom let you wear them?
P: Who’s going to give me platform shoes as a gift? You?
?: Have you ever noticed that if there’s a character in a movie who’s supposed to be not-beautiful, they just take an incredibly beautiful person and do something to her hair and make her wear big, thick glasses?
?: And wrinkled, baggy clothing.
?: And then sometime during the movie, she realizes she really doesn’t need glasses after all and she puts on some nice clothes and combs her hair and all her problems are solved. Unless it’s a sad movie and she dies.
?: Or she finds out she really does have to wear glasses.
?: That would be really sad.
?: That would be too sad. I don’t think I could watch a movie that sad.
?: It does help to wear nice clothes and comb your hair, though.
?: Then you can be a neat ugly person.
?: I like Miss Epler. She’s so different from other people in Seldem and Birdvale.
?: I want to be different from people in Seldem and Birdvale, too. I wonder how you get that way.
?: You have to come from somewhere else.
?: Oh. Is that the only way? Couldn’t you
go
somewhere else?
?: Then you’d still be like someone from Seldem, but maybe nobody there would know what that was.
?: Because for them, you’d be from Somewhere Else.
?: I guess so. I guess that would work.
?: Have you ever been somewhere, and it hit you that if you lived there instead of where you do, your whole life might be really different?
?: It probably wouldn’t be that different, if you’re still the same person.
?: I think it could. I think if you wear different socks, your whole life can be different. It’s like that thing of, if a butterfly flaps its wings in Indonesia, it can cause a tidal wave in Florida. Or maybe it’s Africa, I forget. But that’s not really what I was thinking about. It was