Too Cool for This School by Kristen Tracy Read Free Book Online

happened. As soon as we got to my room, Angelina asked if she could borrow a coat hanger. I gave her one right away, because I had a pile of about a dozen on my floor.
    “Unpacking?” I asked. I was curious to see what clothes she’d brought from Alaska. But instead of opening up her bag, she took off her weird T-shirt and put it on the hanger. I was relieved to see that she was also wearing a bra.
    “I’m wearing this to school the first day,” Angelina said, hoisting the shirt above us. “Do you think all the wrinkles will fall out by then?”
    I gasped a little. She shouldn’t have been worried about whether the wrinkles would fall out over the weekend.First, she should have worried about whether it smelled. My mom used dryer sheets, so all our clothes smelled like baby powder, and we only wore our clothes once and then tossed them in the hamper. Didn’t Angelina’s family follow that rule too? Second, she should have been worried about how weird and ugly her shirt would look to people at my school. But as soon as I thought these things, I felt bad for judging Angelina. I mean, maybe it was a picture of her dog on the front. Maybe she was homesick and so she thought wearing his photo would improve her mood. I pointed to the awful-looking gray dog on the front. “Is he your dog?”
    Angelina gave me a confused look and shook her head. “It’s a wolf.”
    I glanced at her shirt again. She was right. That weird dog did look like a wolf. And there was also a giant full moon on it.
    “Oh,” I said. “You don’t want to show up in your wolf shirt. Nobody in my school wears those.”
    I thought Angelina’s smile would fall right off her face. But it didn’t. It stayed there. “Ooh. So I’d be the first?”
    That was when I suspected that teaching Angelina how to act like a normal sixth grader and make friends at Rio Chama Middle School was going to be pretty difficult.
    “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said. “People at my school wear plain T-shirts. I mean, sometimes they have stripes or a pocket on them. But not wild beasts.”
    “Interesting,” Angelina said.
    “I have plenty of shirts I can lend you,” I offered, eventhough I didn’t really want to lend her my clothes. I didn’t even lend them to my friends. We each had our own style, so we didn’t really share.
    Angelina kept staring at her wolf shirt like she was in love with it.
    “I’m having some friends over tomorrow night for a sleepover,” I said. “We can have a fashion show. My friend Ava will bring over a ton of clothes for you to try on.”
    “How many friends?” Angelina asked.
    “Ava, Rachel, and Lucia,” I said.
    “That’s cool,” Angelina said. “I
love
meeting new people.”
    I looked at her duffel bag again. “Anything else you want to unpack?”
    “Just three things,” she said.
    I watched her unzip the bag. I was dying to see what was inside it. But she didn’t open it all the way. She just pulled out a tank top and a small notebook and a toothbrush.
    “My pajama top and my diary and my toothbrush,” she explained.
    Her pajama top looked almost normal. Except it had weird ink stains on it.
    “I’ll be right back,” she said.
    “You can’t leave my room wearing just a bra!” I said.
    Angelina’s face look horrified. “I know that.”
    She slid her inky pajama top over her head and ran out of my room. And then she returned.
    “Where’s your bathroom?” she asked.
    “Across the hallway,” I said. I followed her. “Don’t use the toothpaste in the blue tube. It’s got special foaming action for people with sensitive teeth.”
    “It’s okay if Angelina wants to use my toothpaste,” my dad called.
    I couldn’t believe he was eavesdropping on us.
    “Use the plain white tube,” I said. “It tastes better. And it’s less expensive.”
    “I have
so
much to learn,” Angelina said as she slammed the bathroom door.
    Then, as if she was competing in the tooth-brushing Olympics, she