Katy Kelly_Lucy Rose 01 by Lucy Rose: Here's the Thing About Me Read Free Book Online Page A

Madam and Pop 's street which is Constitution Avenue and my mom kept saying we should step on it and I should eat my bagel. And thinking about the cream cheese made my stomach feel even sicker. Then I saw Nada from grade 6 walking ahead of us and Melonhead and his mother were just across the street waiting for the light to changeand all of a sudden I threw up and it got in the grass and on my cowgirl boots and a little on my new jacket.

    My mom said, “Eye-yi-yi,” which is what she says when she 's got stress and this was an extremely lot of stress for her and for me because I could see that Nada turned around and was looking and I could hear Melonhead 's mother tell him, “That is not funny, Adam.”
    And I could hear him say, “Yes it is.”
    And my mom was what Madam calls beside herself. “I can 't believe I didn 't realize you were sick!” she told me in her soupy-sad voice. “I 'm so sorry, Lucy Rose.”
    She kneeled down on the sidewalk and wiped my face with old Kleenex from her pocket and gave me a hug. Then she whooshed me off to my grandparents' because she had to get to work because of
News at Noon
needing art and when we got inside I heard her say to Madam, “I just feel rotten leaving her when she 's got the flu.”
    When she said that I felt even worse.
    At my grandparents' I got a big fuss made over me for being sick. Madam rushed around and got me ginger ale which she only allows in the case ofparties or emergencies and she put my school clothes and my jacket in the washing machine and gave me her softy slippers and Pop 's Penn State University T-shirt to wear. She took my temperature and, even though I didn 't have one, propped me up in bed with a lot of pillows in case I felt weak. Pop brought the little TV into my room which is something Madam recommends against in “Dear Lucy Rose” but she made an exception because she said I was so sick with a virus. By then I felt good in my stomach but bad in my heart and was wishing I did have a virus instead.
    There was not much on TV except
Oprah
and I am not one for that show especially when there are crying ladies on it. So instead I was lying flat looking at the ceiling at a little crack that looks like a piece of broccoli when Pop came into my room with the Chinese checkers which is what he plays because he hates Parcheesi. I got the red marbles and he got yellow and we jumped around and Pop didn 't say too much and then after a while I said, “I have a truth to tell you, Pop.”
    And he said, “You do?”
    And I said, “Yes. It is the truth about a big lie.”
    And Pop said, “A really big one?”
    Then he listened about the licorice and how my mom asked me if I ate something and that I said “No.” And I said about the V8 and even telling it made me feel sick all over again. Then I told him how I felt bad about getting free ginger ale and TV from Madam and even worse about making everybody, especially my mom, think I had a virus. And then I started to cry.
    Pop gave me a big hug and patted my hair for a while and then he said, “The thing about lies is that big or little, they make you feel bad but they usually don 't make you throw up.”“I wish I never said it,” I told him.
    And he said, “That is usually the feeling good people get after they tell a lie.”
    So I said, “What do I do?”“Well,” he said, “the only way to fix a lie is to tell the truth and that 's called being honorable.”
    So at 6:00 I went downstairs and sat on the steps and was nervous and waited for my mom. The minute she came in I ran up to her and made a big confession.
    She said, “Thank you for telling me the truth, Lucy Rose.”
    I said, “It 's because I 'm honorable.”“I 'm glad you weren 't really sick,” my mom said. And then she sat on the steps and I sat on her lap and after a while she said, “What do you think your punishment should be, Lucy Rose?”
    I hated to say it. “No TV for the longest time,” I said. “And no