"BSC050 - Dawn's Big Date - Martin, Ann M" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin Ann M)

"Then you're strange," Norman replied. "That stuff's horrible. Guess where my parents are sending me this summer."
"Where?" I asked.
"To Fat Camp," he said grimly. , "You mean a weight reduction camp?"
"Yup. Fat Camp."
"Maybe it will help," I suggested.
Norman shook his head. "I don't want to go to camp. It's for eight weeks. I don't want to go away for the whole summer. I'm not going. They can't make me."
"Did you tell your parents how you feel?"
"Yeah," Norman replied. "They said if I lose twenty pounds, I don't have to go."
"Then there's the solution!" I said. "You have to stick to a diet and lose twenty pounds."
Norman sighed and glumly propped his chin in his hands. "I like to eat. I don't want to stop eating. I get sick of everyone telling me what to do."
Just then, a snowball hit the kitchen window. I got up and looked outside. In the backyard Sarah and Elizabeth had built a snowman. It had only two sections. A small head with rocks forming the features of his face, and a big bottom. The snowman was all out of whack. The body was too big for the head.
Sarah and Elizabeth saw me looking. Sarah fiddled with her mitten. There was a guilty look on her face.
Then I saw why.
Elizabeth was laughing and pointing with a stick to the snow in front of the snowman. In the snow were written the words, Enormous Hill.
Chapter 5.
When I walked in my front door that evening, I was feeling pretty bad. I wasn't sick or anything, just sad.
I felt so sorry for Norman Hill. Before I could stop him, he'd come to the window and looked out at the fat snowman. You should have seen his face. It would have broken your heart.
"They're just trying to make you mad, Norman," I said.
"It's okay," he replied. "I'm used to it."
Later, when I looked out the window again, the snowman was smashed. I wondered if Sarah had done it. Was she feeling guilty? Maybe she just didn't want to get in trouble.
Poor Norman. He didn't even get a break when his mother came home. Mrs. Hill is a small, thin woman. Sarah looks exactly like
her. The minute she walked in the door, Sarah told her mother that Norman had been eating in his room. "And he's been eating all day long," Sarah added, as she followed her mother up the stairs.
"Is that true?" Mrs. Hill asked me, before even saying hello. (So far, Mr. and Mrs. Hill were not winning any popularity votes with me.)
Norman and I were sitting at the kitchen table. He was showing me a book he'd just gotten. It was The Marvel Encyclopedia of Super Heroes. I've never been big on super heroes, but Norman made it seem kind of interesting.
"He did have a few snacks," I admitted to Mrs. Hill. (Luckily, Norman wasn't eating at the moment.) "But I wouldn't say he was eating all day long," I added quickly.
"He was too!" Sarah insisted.
Mrs. Hill just sighed as she opened the refrigerator and stared into it wearily. She pulled out a bowl of tuna salad. Taking a clean plate from the dishwasher, she plopped a large spoonful of tuna on it. "Here's your supper Norman," she said, sticking a fork into the mound of tuna and placing it in front of him. "How was your day, sweetheart?"
"All right, I guess. I had fun with Dawn," he answered.
"I'm glad/' she told him with a small smile, though she didn't ask what we had done or anything else. Mrs. Hill paid me as I put on my coat. "You did a fine job," she said, walking me to the door. "Just don't let Norman eat so much next time you come."
I was still thinking about the Hills as I stood at our stove and cooked a soybean burger. The rest of my family had already eaten supper. Mom and Richard were at a PTA meeting. Jeff had gone back to California, and Mary Anne was studying at Logan's.
It was odd having the house so empty and quiet. Odd but nice. I wouldn't want to be alone all the time, but I like it once in awhile.
I wasn't alone for long, though. The front door slammed, and Mary Anne came bounding into the kitchen. Her eyes were lit with excitement. "We have an official date," she told me. "I'm going to mark it on the calendar." She went to the wall calendar and wrote LBA in the box for January thirteenth. Then she drew a big star around the letters.
"What's LBA?" I asked as I took my burger to the table.
"Lewis Bruno arrives!" she said brightly. "I was there when he phoned. I even spoke to him. Oh, Dawn, he seems so nice! He sounds just like Logan. He has that same cute accent,
and even his voice is the same. It's unbelievable. You're going to like Lewis so much."
Suddenly a clump of soybean burger got stuck in my throat.
I stood up and started coughing. Mary Anne hopped around me anxiously. "Are you okay?"
"Water," I sputtered.
Quickly, Mary Anne got me some. In a minute I was okay.
"Was it something I said?" Mary Anne asked.
"Maybe. January thirteenth is just a week from today. I can't be ready by then."
"Ready?" Mary Anne asked. "What do you have to do?"
"Oh, um, nothing," I stammered. "I don't know why I said that."
Mary Anne looked confused. I hadn't told her, or anyone, about my plan to make myself more attractive to boys. I'd decided Lewis would be my test case. If I could make him like me Ч I mean really like me Ч then I would know what to do with boys in general.
I should have been able to tell this to Mary Anne. You can usually tell her just about anything, and she tries to understand. But somehow I felt funny about it.
To be honest, I was a little embarrassed. I'd
always thought Mary Anne looked up to me. (At least a little.) I thought she saw me as secure and confident. I didn't want to shatter her image of me as an individualist.
Boy, was I wrong.
As it turned out, I wasn't the only one who thought I could use a makeover. Mary Anne thought so, too!
I didn't discover this until that evening. I'd gone up to my room with a stack of fashion magazines. I'd borrowed them from Stacey the week before. I'm usually not terribly interested in that stuff. This was why I still hadn't gotten around to looking through them. But there was no time left. Lewis was coming in a week. I had to get going on my makeover Ч and fast.