Stand-Off by Andrew Smith Read Free Book Online

play rugby and take fluff and breadth classes. Easy report card full of vowels. It was all lined up perfectly.
    But Sam Abernathy equaled total anarchy, treading water for the next nine months.
    To make matters worse, Sam Abernathy would end up being in two of my classes: Creative Writing, followed by the worst-imaginable scenario, Culinary Arts, which was also the only class I had with Annie Altman. But I didn’t find out about this wonderful arrangement until later.
    I could not get away from the guy. At least I was safe for first period, Body Conditioning (which was only for twelfth-grade boys) and for Health (also, a new thing at Pine Mountain—a class for only senior boys that was a ninety-minute endurance test in discomfort because it was (1) taught by a woman, Mrs. Blyleven, and (2) all about “issues” like sex and consent and being a good young man); and then I could always count on the sanctuary of rugby practice and Coach McAuliffe to make me forget everything Abernathy and Blyleven.
    Or so I thought.
    So, yeah, it was a shock for me to see Sam Abernathy timidly enter my Creative Writing class, and it was entirely natural for me to assume the little crouton was simply lost in a forest of gigantic lettuce leaves. Or something.
    But no. And of course, I had no way of knowing anything about the Abernathy, because I refused to converse with him .
    Sam Abernathy was an open book as far as I was concerned. I didn’t need to ask about any details in the kid’s two-sentence biography. I decided then and there to make a chart (that’s not creepy of me, is it?) in which I would predict everything about the Abernathy, and then I could check it off during the course of whatever period of endurance I’d have to endure with my unendurable roommate, just to see how very right I could be:

    â€œOh. Hi, Ryan Dean.”
    â€œHello.”
    â€œIs it okay if I sit next to you?”
    â€œNo. Because you’re not in this class.”
    The Abernathy unzipped his notebook. He had one of those really big, zipper-shut notebook organizers that nobody would ever willingly be seen with in public. He took out his class schedule.
    â€œIs this Creative Writing, with Dr. Wellins?”
    Mr.—Dr.—Wellins, a monumentally renowned pervert, had been my American Lit teacher in eleventh grade. Apparently, over the summer, he had earned a PhD in misidentifying sexual subtext in classic literature. I liked Mr.—uh, Dr.—Wellins, despite the fact that he was really creepy.
    I sighed and waved my hand at the empty seat beside me.
    Annie would be pleased at how nice I just was, I thought.
    Sam Abernathy sat down, all smiles.
    â€œI’m so glad I actually know somebody in one of my classes,” he said. “This is going to be fun!”
    Fun.
    Dr. Wellins came in, wrote his name and the date on the board at the front of the class, then launched into a dramatic speech with lots of hand gestures about how we were only to refer to him as Dr. Wellins , and that we were all going to find this the most uncomfortable (he was already right about that) and difficult class of our career—so we might rethink committing to the course right now.
    I was used to this type of opener. A lot of the teachers at PM were so full of their own credentials, they tried to scare down the number of papers they’d have to grade right at the start of each term by proclaiming their impermeable magnificence. I looked around at the sets of terrified eyeballs staring at the master of all things creative and wordlike.
    There were sixteen kids in the class, and ten of them were girls. Score on that one. Also, I was pretty sure I was the only senior. Everyone else looked really young (Sam Abernathy looked like a fetus with a necktie). But the other kids probably thought I was a tenth grader or something, anyway.
    Then Dr. Wellins fired off a machine-gun barrage of requirements for his course, which included