Taking Care of Terrific by Lois Lowry Read Free Book Online Page A

forty-five-year-old woman, she looks like a Miss America contestant about to do a flaming-baton routine to the accompaniment of "I Feel Pretty."
    She loves her teenagers so much that once, in front of three of his friends (who later told me about it), she told Seth that his acne made his face look like a piece of volcanic rock. Seth loves her so much that when she said it, he threw an algebra book at her.
    Seth is in my class at the Carstairs School, and his sisters are in the seventh grade. Seth's sisters are twins. Despite the fact that one of Wilma Sandroffs book chapters is titled "Your Kids Are Individuals," she named the twins—ready for this? Got an airsick bag handy?—Arlene and Marlene, and she made them dress identically until last year, when they were eleven. Last year they were picked up for shoplifting in Hit or
Miss. They were shoplifting non-identical clothes. The social worker assigned to the case suggested to the Famous Dr. Sandroff that maybe she should let them dress the way they want (precisely the same suggestion that Dr. Sandroff had made to one million parents in her book). Now the twins dress the way they want, which outside of school is mostly in punk rock style, and they call their mother Plasticface behind her back—or to her face, when her face is looking out of the TV screen. The twins plan to run away as soon as they're old enough to get waitress jobs in some remote state where they can never be found.
    Everybody at the Carstairs School knows about the Sandroff twins' plan to run away. There is even a movement afoot, headed by Seth, to hold a bake sale to raise money for identical bus fares to Montana. But Wilma Sandroff doesn't know about it because she is always off appearing on talk shows, telling people how to get in touch with their adolescents. Arlene and Marlene plan to get in touch with
her
someday, by postcard with no return address.
    I feel sorry for Seth, but it's almost impossible to like him. His personality is like a rattlesnake's. When I recognized his voice on the phone, I recoiled a little, as if he might strike with poison fangs right through the wires. Somehow even his "Hello" sounded sarcastic.
    "So, what are you doing this summer, Enid?" Seth asked.
    "Not much. All my friends are off at camp. Trina Bentley's at horse camp, and Emily Went-worth's at tennis camp, and—" I stopped. It occurred to me that Trina and Emily wouldn't want me telling anything about them to gross Seth Sandroff.
    "I'm taking art classes at the museum," I added, "and babysitting. What are you doing this summer, Seth?"
    "Working at the station. They had to give me a job because my father owns it. But I like it okay." Seth was talking about his father's TV station.
    My eavesdropping mother appeared in the hall, where I was talking on the phone. She'd apparently been listening from the living room.
    "Is that Seth Sandroff?" she whispered loudly. "Ask him if he'd like to come over for dinner some night."
    My mother is actually a Wilma Sandroff
fan.
She has an autographed copy of that asinine book. I made a hideous face at her and formed
the words "Go away" silently with my mouth. My mother shrugged and went away.
    "—pretty sneaky," Seth was saying. I hadn't heard the first part because of my mother.
    "What? What's pretty sneaky?" I asked. "I didn't hear what you said."
    Seth laughed, an evil sort of laugh. "I said I
know
what you've been doing, Enid. And who you're hanging out with." His voice sounded like those guys in old movies, the ones who say, "We
know
you have the secret formula, heh-heh."
    I tried to figure out what he meant. The people in my art class are mostly kids from suburban schools, kids I hardly know at all. They seem nice enough, most of them. But I don't hang out with them.
    "What are you talking about, Seth?" I asked in a bored voice.
    He lowered his voice to make it sound really subversive. "I've seen you, Enid. I was on my bike, heading over to Tremont Street on an