Fuzzy by Tom Angleberger Read Free Book Online Page A

father has a background in technology and would be more likely to do his pleasure reading with an electronic device.”
    Max shook her head in amazement. “You’re learning, Fuzzy! Fast!”
    But a moment later, Fuzzy showed how clueless he could still be.
    When they went to sit down around the table, they were one chair short.
    â€œOh, let me go get a chair from the guest room,” said Mrs. Zelaster.
    â€œNo, thank you,” said Fuzzy. “I do not need a chair.”
    And he lowered himself to the correct height.
    Max looked under the table and saw that his legs were in what looked like a very uncomfortable squat, at least for a human. In fact, she realized, one of his knees wasbent backward. It was disgusting, and when she looked up she saw that her parents had seen it, too.
    It was an awkward reminder to all of them that this wasn’t a human after all.
    â€œI’ll get the chair,” said Max, jumping up.
    Unfortunately, by the time she returned, the conversation had completely stalled, and her mother had remembered where it all started.
    â€œAll right, Max,” said her mother, no longer shouting, but calm and logical, which Max knew was often worse. “Your ‘friend’ here may be a fun distraction for you, but we can’t have all these discipline and test problems piling up on you. You have got to start really concentrating on important things.”
    â€œWell, Mom, I—”
    â€œUh-uh.” Her mom held up a hand. “I’m not finished. Not even close. Acting like a companion to a robot may be a big deal among your friends at Vanguard, but you can’t play the hotshot at school when you’re failing your tests.”
    â€œI’m not acting like a hotshot!”
    â€œBut you
are
failing the tests, Max,” said her dad. “You promised us you were going to study and bringyour scores up. Look, I just downloaded the report from your school, and your scores are actually worse this week!”
    He held up his communications pad to show Max the report Barbara had sent. It was an animated line graph, and her mother got more and more upset as it played.
    â€œDo you see that line?” her mother asked. That’s your test scores! And this one is discipline! And . . . oh, Max . . . this is the overall #CUG score. That’s the big one, right? Well, it looks like a stock market crash! Do you see that?”
    Max stared at it. It did look pretty bad.
    â€œYour mother asked you a question: Do. You. See. It?”
    â€œYes, I can see it!”
    â€œDon’t give me that attitude!” said her mom. “We don’t need attitude—we’ve got plenty of attitude—what we need is for you to study!”
    â€œI did study! Honest, I don’t know how I could have failed. I knew those answers!”
    â€œDon’t sit there and say you knew the answers when you obviously didn’t. Do you think this doesn’t matter? Do you know what the person from the school boardtold me? They told me that you may have to take remedial classes . . . at the county EC school!”
    Max froze. EC school?
    EC stood for ExtraChallenge. Supposedly it was a school for students who needed a little extra help UpGrading, but everyone said the EC schools were full of bad kids and really bad teachers. Max wasn’t even sure where the actual school was.
    â€œFrom what I hear,” said her dad, “once you get sent to EC school, you’ll never catch up.”
    That was what Max had heard, too.
    â€œOh, Max,” said her mother, “you’re going to end up just like Tabbie Filmore.”
    Tabbie had been a friend of Max and Krysti who started the year at Vanguard but didn’t last long. She was weird and hilarious but also smart. Or at least she had seemed smart. But then she started flunking the UpGrade tests. One day she told Max and Krysti some school board official had actually come to her house