"Truth or Dare - Pfeffer, Susan Beth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pfeffer Susan Beth)

Chapter 1
When your world has come to an absolute end, it's hard to believe that people expect you to go on. In less than six months, my two best friends and my favorite brother had practically vanished from my life, and I was still expected to^go to school.
Language arts class had just started, but already I was bored and miserable. I only hoped I wouldn't feel this way for the rest of the school year. We were only on day one; that left an awful lot of time to be bored and miserable. And I wanted to die from loneliness.
I used to like school. Not studying or homework, but everything else about school was okay. Writing compositions had always been one of my favorite things to do too, and now all I could do was stare at Mr. Flynn, my language arts teacher, and
wonder how such an insensitive person ever got to teach sixth graders.
"I've never taught sixth graders before," he said, almost answering my question. "So we're going to have to learn together."
Comments like that don't build confidence. My world had come to an absolute end, and I wasn't even going to have a teacher who knew what he was doing. For this my parents paid taxes?
"Very well then," Mr. Flynn said, although nothing seemed very well at all, and I knew he knew it. "Let's start the school year with a composition. I always say writing is the best form of communication, except for conversation."
"And sex," one of the boys muttered. I was close enough to hear him and embarrassed enough to blush. If this was what junior high was going to be like, no wonder Mary Kay's parents insisted she go to parochial school. No wonder Francie's mother left town. No wonder my world had shattered.
Actually Francie's mother had decided she and Francie were going to move before it was announced that all the sixth graders were going to go to the junior high. Not that she would have approved. As far as I could figure out, none of the parents of
kids who'd be in the sixth grade approved, but somehow the measure got passed.
"It has to do with the school budget," my mother tried explaining to me. "And population shifts."
Even then I scowled, and I didn't know Mary Kay would be going to St. Theresa's.
"You see, the elementary schools are overcrowded," Mom continued. "And the high school doesn't have enough students. So, if they move all the sixth graders to the junior high, then the ninth graders can go to the high school. The elementary schools won't be overcrowded anymore, and the high school will be full again, and the junior high will remain about the same. It's really very practical."
I guess if Francie and Mary Kay had started junior high with me, then I wouldn't have hated it so much. But Francie hadn't even finished fifth grade with us. She and her mother had left by April, when her mother got a great new job in Chicago. And that had just left Mary Kay and me to be best friends, and now I didn't have Mary Kay, either. Mary Kay's parents had gotten hysterical at the thought of her going to junior high.
"She's only ten," her mother pointed out to my mother. "Mary Kay has always been
the youngest in her class. I don't think it's right for a ten-year-old to be in junior high , school."
"It's only a building," my mom said.
"I only wish that were true," Mary Ray's mother said. "But I remember junior high. It isn't just a building. It's an entire way of life."
When I realized I was going to be in
junior high without my two best friends, I
cried for a solid week. Everyone in my
family tried to comfort me, but it didn't
work.
"You can see Mary Kay anytime you want," Dad pointed out. "She isn't leaving town."
"When you go to a different school, you might as well live in a different world," I said.
"You and Francie can write to each other," Mom said. "You love writing letters."
"But it won't be nearly the same as having her with me," I said. "And Francie writes terrible letters."
"You can meet exciting new people," my sister Andrea said long-distance from 1 Boston. "Just think of this as an oppor-"j tunity to expand your horizons."
"I liked my horizons," I said, "just the way they were."
"You place too much importance on friends," my brother Paul said. "Friends are important, but they're not everything. If there were only something that really interested you, the way dance interests me."
"But there isn't," I said. Paul dances. Paul's always danced, and it's the only thing that's ever interested him. It's made him a very boring person. I guess other dancers think he's interesting, but to anybody who doesn't think the world begins and ends with the ballet, Paul is about as dull as a person can be. Just seeing how boring Paul is has kept me from developing any hobbies. I once almost got interested in stamp collecting, but when I thought about only talking about stamps, and talking with people who collect stamps, and not having any friends who didn't collect stamps also, I really panicked. For the longest time I didn't dare look at an envelope.
"I don't have any advice for you," my brother Mark said. "It's going to be very rough. But I know you'll make it through and make new friends, and things will be okay for you again."
I sat there in language arts, trying to pay attention to what Mr. Flynn was saying, but just thinking about what Mark
had said made me want to start crying all over again. What a way to start junior high, though, sobbing like some kindergartener.
But I missed Mark so much, and he'd only been gone a week. He started college in North Carolina, where he is a physical therapy major. That's the sort of person Mark is. He helps people; he cares about them. He's always cared about me, and while I didn't miss him as much as Francie and Mary Kay put together, I certainly missed him more than either one of them alone.
Mark may have been seven years older than me, but he always let me tag along and do stuff with him. I was the mascot on his junior high soccer team. He played horsy with me all the time when I was little, and as I got older he always had time to help me with my homework. Not like Andrea, who started college when I was seven, so I hardly knew her. Or Paul, who's three years older than me, but is always practicing or at ballet class or generally unaware that there's more to life than second position.
"All right, class," Mr. Flynn was saying when I started paying attention again. "I know this is hokey, but it's a good way for us to get to know one another. I want every
one of you to write just a paragraph or two about what you did during your summer vacation."
Everyone in the class groaned. I'd never heard twenty-eight groans at once before. It was pretty impressive.
"Come on, guys," Mr. Flynn said. "One paragraph isn't going to kill you."
"That's what you think," Billy Thompson said. I knew him from elementary school. Actually I knew about a third of the kids in the class, but I didn't know any of them really well. The person I knew best was Libby Katz, who'd been a pretty good friend up until third grade, when Francie started at our school. Libby and Franeie didn't get along, and I ended up being best friends with Francie. Libby had other friends, so I didn't feel so bad that we'd stopped being friends.
"Get going," Mr. Flynn said. "And you'd better put something decent down on paper, because I intend to call on as many of you as I can fit in."
Absolutely nothing had happened to me during summer vacation except the destruction of my entire world, but that wasn't anything I wanted to write about. I chewed on my pencil for a moment or two, trying to think if anything else had happened that was worth writing about.
"During the summer, I watched a lot of TV."
It was true, but it wasn't a paragraph, ancl it probably wasn't something Mr. Flynn would want to hear.
"During the summer, I was very bored all the time."
Good, not great.
"During the summer, my best friend's parents decided to send her to parochial school, so she wouldn't be stuck here."
Actually that happened more to Mary Kay and her parents than it did to me. And Mr. Flynn might be offended by it. So I concentrated some more, and then I remembered we'd all taken a vacation together. Paul had complained about it, because it meant he missed practicing, and I hadn't much wanted to go because I was so busy crying, but Mom and Dad insisted.