When Life Gives You O.J. by Erica S. Perl Read Free Book Online

that she had gone to camp and become this camp person who didn’t write me even a single letter, who knew? And what about the boys …?
    What if Nicky Benoit found out?
    Nicky Benoit
 … I cringed at the thought. Nicky Benoit had been picking on me since my first five minutes at school in Vermont. My fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Conroy, had met me in the hallway and asked me what I liked to be called. Then we went into the classroom together and she announced, “We have a new student. Please welcome Zelly Fried. She justmoved here from New York.” And she wrote my name on the board in big block letters:
ZELLY FRIED
    When she finished making the
D
at the end of my name, I heard a loud laugh from one of the boys in the back. But nobody said anything.
    Until lunch.
    I found a seat at a table with a bunch of girls from my class. All of a sudden, I heard someone behind me make a big, exaggerated sniffing sound. I turned in my seat and saw a boy—Nicky Benoit—standing there. He had dirty blond hair and dark, almost black eyes.
    “P.U.!” he yelled, right in my face. “What stinks? Smelly FRIED egg! Ha-ha!” And then he started running around repeating it and holding his nose, and some of the other boys started laughing and saying it too.
    I froze, startled.
Did I really smell bad?
I didn’t think I did, though the last thing I was going to do was to try to check with everyone staring at me. Of course, I knew what his joke was. My family sometimes got wrong numbers that asked to speak to Mr. or Mrs. FRY-d, since our last name, which is pronounced FREE-d, is spelled F-R-I-E-D. But I’d never been called a
smelly
fried egg on account of my nickname being Zelly.
    “Ignore him,” advised the girl sitting next to me. She had long, straight blond hair all hanging down her back exceptfor one tiny braid by her ear. All around us were kids with shiny, straight blond or light brown hair. In Brooklyn, almost all of the kids in my class had dark hair. Thick, dark brown hair like mine; dark, shiny black hair; dark brown woven braids with beads at the end; or just plain dark brown hair. Looking around the lunchroom, I began to wonder if anyone in the entire state of Vermont had dark brown bushy hair like me. The lunch lady who grabbed Nicky and benched him for the rest of lunch had frizzy red hair, but that wasn’t the same thing.
    Another straight-haired girl nodded, her ponytail bobbing up and down. “He’s a loser,” she added.
    I nodded too, trying to act like what had happened was no big deal. But inside I felt I might start crying, which I really didn’t want to do. I couldn’t believe this was happening. In Brooklyn, everyone knew how to pronounce my name. The principal at my old school had even been named Mrs. FRIEDRICKS. No one would have dared call her Mrs. FRY-dricks.
    Quickly, I uncrumpled the top of my brown paper bag and peered down into it. There was an apple, some pretzels, and something square wrapped in waxed paper—strange, since my mother usually used foil—and several rubber bands. I pulled it out and unwrapped it suspiciously. Inside, I found a sandwich made of rye bread, mustard, and some sort of dark pink meat. I peeled back the top slice of bread and saw …
    Oh no.
    The girl who had called Nicky a loser looked at mysandwich with interest. The girl next to her looked over too. She had a haircut I had begged my mom to let me get in third grade: bangs and one length all over. For the next six months I had to walk around with my head looking like a mushroom.
    “Is that bologna?” asked the girl next to me, fiddling with her tiny braid.
    “Uh, no,” I answered without thinking, before realizing that there would be no way of explaining my lunch to them.
You see, I have this grandfather, named Ace. And he lives with us now because my grandma died. Well, he must have packed my lunch and he put in a tongue sandwich. Yeah, tongue, like in your mouth, only it’s a cow’s tongue. I used to like it when I