Lost in the Sun by Lisa Graff Read Free Book Online Page B

wasn’t), and he re-hid them all in
Doug’s
bedroom. Which was actually pretty funny, what with Doug waking up at 11:30 at night, and then 12:06, and then 2:27, and all through the night, going, “Gah! Gah!” and tearing through his room searching for the beeping. But the problem was that Doug’s room was right next door to mine, instead of Aaron’s, which was across the hall, so I
heard
all of that, and I didn’t get much sleep either.
    At breakfast while Doug and I poured our cereal all blurry-eyed and did
not
talk about alarm clocks so Mom wouldn’t know we’d been pulling pranks, Aaron just smiled and drank his orange juice.
    â€œGet some good sleep before the first day of school, little brother?” he asked Doug.
    Doug glared at him.
    When Mom ruffled all our heads and went upstairs to finish getting ready, Aaron turned to the two of us and said, “Remember, we’re leaving for St. Albans at four fifty, sharp. Not a second later, all right?” He looked specifically at me when he said that. “Four fifty, and we’re out of here, so be ready or I’m leaving without you.”
    â€œAnd wouldn’t that be the worst,” I muttered, because after Friday I definitely was not looking forward to another fun-filled dinner with Dad the Jerk.
    Anyway, so that’s what was rolling around in my tired brain when that wrinkled old crone Ms. Emerson was droning on and on about homeroom rules, listing them all on the board with their corresponding “consequences.”
Verbal warning
Written warning
Detention
    I squinted at the list and made up my mind.
    â€œSo all we have to do is screw up three times and then we get detention?” I asked. I asked it pretty loudly. Didn’t raise my hand, either. “That seems easy.”
    Ms. Emerson swiveled around from where she was writing at the board. Her black crone eyes zoomed in on me.
    The room went silent.
    Slowly, Ms. Emerson glanced down at the roll-call sheet on her stovetop desk.
    â€œTrent, is it?” she asked me. She didn’t have to ask it. She knew full well. In this town, everyone knew.
    â€œTrent,” I confirmed.
    She took a slow, wrinkled breath. “Trent,” she said. “I’m happy to discuss any concerns you may have with my rules after homeroom ends, but just at the moment we have some very important things to discuss that pertain to the whole class, and not much time to do it. Furthermore”—her black eyes darted to the list of rules she’d scribbled on the board—“as we’ve just gone over, talking out of turn is not permitted in this class. As I’ve mentioned, rule breaking may be grounds for detention.”
    And with that, she moved on, to ask Sarah Delfino to help her hand out student schedules.
    â€œHow long is detention?” I asked, interrupting Ms. Emerson again a minute later, when she had just started in about changing periods and lockers.
    â€œI’m sorry?” Ms. Emerson said in that way that indicated she wasn’t sorry in the slightest. She narrowed her eyes at me, and everyone in the class sucked in their breaths together. The wrinkled old crone’s eyes did
not
look pretty when they were narrowed.
    â€œHow long is detention?” I asked again. “How long does it go for?”
    Ms. Emerson straightened up her old-crone back. You could almost see the wheels in her head turning, deciding if she should answer me or not. I guess she finally decided she should.
    â€œIt lasts as long as I deem appropriate,” she told me. I bet she thought she was being really clever, giving me an answer like that.
    I nodded, still thinking. “Could it last all the way to five o’clock?” I said. “I mean, if someone did something really terrible?”
    â€œTrent,” Ms. Emerson said slowly. Like a dog growling, low and menacing. “You’ll be staying in your seat after the bell rings for