o 3852bd5b2f216136 by Unknown Read Free Book Online
Authors: Unknown
soon.
Great. And I’M supposed to be a good role model for HER.
I don’t know what is happening to me.
The Cro Mags think I’m a sissy bookworm. My teachers think I’m a slacker. My 8th-grade friends look up to me and I let them down. My 10th-grade friends feel betrayed.
I’M TRYING TO DO THE BEST I CAN, and my life gets worse every day.
I CAN’T TAKE THIS.
I need advice. I need to talk to someone.
But who?
Not Jay. He’ll just tell me I need a girlfriend.
Not Ted. He doesn’t have time for me. He’s too busy figuring out creative ways to destroy the house.
Mom and Dad are on the other side of the world. And Alex is halfway to Mars.
Maybe Dr. Welsch has an opening. Ha ha.
Anyway, enough of this. I have to study Julius.
“To be or not to be …”
Or is that another play?
Whatever.
Up in the Vista Hills
Overlooking the Valley
With a Full Stomach
And Feeling, for the First Time in Awhile [sic],
Like a Human Being
It is so dark and quiet up here. A little cool, but that’s all right. Below me, Palo City stretches out, and I can see lights flicking off as people go to bed.
The old telescope isn’t here anymore. It’s just four bolts in some cracked pavement now, next to the concrete block where I used to stand when I was a kid, and I’d look through and never be able to see much because of the smog and the fact that Dad never taught me how to FOCUS the thing.
Oh well.
It’s so nice to relax and thing of all this stuff.
Enjoy it while it lasts, Ducky.
You sure didn’t expect it. Not the way this day started. It could have been a total washout.
The pop quiz in math was bad enough. But the chem lab experiment was worse, only because the chemicals STANK, which gave you a splitting headache. Then came the read-aloud of J
Caesar in English class, and OF COURSE you were the bad guy, Brutus, and all the Cro Mags were snickering about THAT, after they got over their hilarious pantomime of friends, Romans, and countrymen “lending their ears” by ripping them off and howling in pain.
THEY ARE FIFTEEN YEARS OLD. HAVEN’T THEY GROWN OUT OF STUFF LIKE
THIS? (And you think you’re immature?)
Not only that, but Alex was absent today, and you can’t help but be worried.
So with all THAT on your mind, you were not too excited when Sunny asked you to go to the hospital AGAIN after school — but you had to say yes, because she said she needed help brining her mom home after some tests.
Then, when you arrived at the hospital, you found out that two members of Mrs. Winslow’s support group were there, and so was Mr. Winslow. So Sunny’s mom DIDN’T need the help, and you were just there because Sunny was nervous and SHE needed support.
At first you didn’t mind because you wanted to help. The support group people were really nice, and they assumed you were Sunny’s boyfriend and treated you like part of the family, and Mrs.
Winslow was very thankful, and you did hold her arm as she went from the bed to the
wheelchair, so you didn’t feel TOTALLY useless.
Afterward you were ready to go home and try to catch up on schoolwork, but Sunny asked you to drive her back to her house. She could have gone in her dad’s car, but no, she insisted. And you figured, hey, what are friends for? — and all the way back, Sunny DID NOT STOP
COMPLAINING. Her mom’s sickness was draining her, her dad was being crabby, her life was HORRIBLE and DEPRESSING and all she wanted to do was RUN AWAY.
So you joked with her and reassured her and told her she was great, but your heart wasn’t in it, because all you could think about were Alex’s problems and the Cro Mags and Jay and math class and Julius Caesar and Ghana and YOUR OWN DEPRESSING LIFE, but you told yourself
not to be selfish, and you listened to Sunny go on and on, being sarcastic and complaining about her poor, sick mom, and even though you didn’t mean to be rude, you said, “At least YOUR
mom is around.”
Major, major mistake.
Right away
Great. And I’M supposed to be a good role model for HER.
I don’t know what is happening to me.
The Cro Mags think I’m a sissy bookworm. My teachers think I’m a slacker. My 8th-grade friends look up to me and I let them down. My 10th-grade friends feel betrayed.
I’M TRYING TO DO THE BEST I CAN, and my life gets worse every day.
I CAN’T TAKE THIS.
I need advice. I need to talk to someone.
But who?
Not Jay. He’ll just tell me I need a girlfriend.
Not Ted. He doesn’t have time for me. He’s too busy figuring out creative ways to destroy the house.
Mom and Dad are on the other side of the world. And Alex is halfway to Mars.
Maybe Dr. Welsch has an opening. Ha ha.
Anyway, enough of this. I have to study Julius.
“To be or not to be …”
Or is that another play?
Whatever.
Up in the Vista Hills
Overlooking the Valley
With a Full Stomach
And Feeling, for the First Time in Awhile [sic],
Like a Human Being
It is so dark and quiet up here. A little cool, but that’s all right. Below me, Palo City stretches out, and I can see lights flicking off as people go to bed.
The old telescope isn’t here anymore. It’s just four bolts in some cracked pavement now, next to the concrete block where I used to stand when I was a kid, and I’d look through and never be able to see much because of the smog and the fact that Dad never taught me how to FOCUS the thing.
Oh well.
It’s so nice to relax and thing of all this stuff.
Enjoy it while it lasts, Ducky.
You sure didn’t expect it. Not the way this day started. It could have been a total washout.
The pop quiz in math was bad enough. But the chem lab experiment was worse, only because the chemicals STANK, which gave you a splitting headache. Then came the read-aloud of J
Caesar in English class, and OF COURSE you were the bad guy, Brutus, and all the Cro Mags were snickering about THAT, after they got over their hilarious pantomime of friends, Romans, and countrymen “lending their ears” by ripping them off and howling in pain.
THEY ARE FIFTEEN YEARS OLD. HAVEN’T THEY GROWN OUT OF STUFF LIKE
THIS? (And you think you’re immature?)
Not only that, but Alex was absent today, and you can’t help but be worried.
So with all THAT on your mind, you were not too excited when Sunny asked you to go to the hospital AGAIN after school — but you had to say yes, because she said she needed help brining her mom home after some tests.
Then, when you arrived at the hospital, you found out that two members of Mrs. Winslow’s support group were there, and so was Mr. Winslow. So Sunny’s mom DIDN’T need the help, and you were just there because Sunny was nervous and SHE needed support.
At first you didn’t mind because you wanted to help. The support group people were really nice, and they assumed you were Sunny’s boyfriend and treated you like part of the family, and Mrs.
Winslow was very thankful, and you did hold her arm as she went from the bed to the
wheelchair, so you didn’t feel TOTALLY useless.
Afterward you were ready to go home and try to catch up on schoolwork, but Sunny asked you to drive her back to her house. She could have gone in her dad’s car, but no, she insisted. And you figured, hey, what are friends for? — and all the way back, Sunny DID NOT STOP
COMPLAINING. Her mom’s sickness was draining her, her dad was being crabby, her life was HORRIBLE and DEPRESSING and all she wanted to do was RUN AWAY.
So you joked with her and reassured her and told her she was great, but your heart wasn’t in it, because all you could think about were Alex’s problems and the Cro Mags and Jay and math class and Julius Caesar and Ghana and YOUR OWN DEPRESSING LIFE, but you told yourself
not to be selfish, and you listened to Sunny go on and on, being sarcastic and complaining about her poor, sick mom, and even though you didn’t mean to be rude, you said, “At least YOUR
mom is around.”
Major, major mistake.
Right away
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