Beetle Boy by Margaret Willey

Author:Margaret Willey
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group

I went six years without going back to Mrs. M.’s house. Why? Was it because I was mad at her for being so concerned about Liam? Was it because I had to do three final author gigs without a costume? Did I blame her? Did I feel abandoned? I don’t know. I just let it get away from me. I think, in some ways, I made this decision not to think any more about her. Not to need her. She became another woman I refused to need.

The first year, my first year in middle school, was a terrible time for me because even though there were basically no more author jobs, Dad was still moving full speed ahead with new Beetle Boy books—the final two. These books were, if it’s even possible, the worst ones we had done. Sam Church was no longer interested in illustrating them, and it showed. He had never been paid for the previous two books, and some of the drawings looked like he had forgotten to finish them—Beetle Boy often appeared without antennae or missing his spots or his eyeballs. And unlike the first set, there was basically no background—they were just dead bugs on a blank page. I’m no artist, but even at age eleven, I could see that they were bad. But Dad was still operating on blind ambition, refusing to give up his dream of easy money on the author circuit, probably because he had no idea what he would do instead.

Ever since I burned the costume (I told him I lost it), he must have sensed that his days of manipulating me were numbered; I was building up the courage to defy him completely.

Everything came to a whimpering halt one afternoon at a school book fair in Nunica, where I was the featured guest author. There was no fee, so the gig depended entirely on book sales, a surefire disaster since the new books were so lame and I was surrounded by real books at lower prices. That day Dad was openly angry at me, a new and barely controlled anger that was obvious to everybody from the way he glared at me, dragged me by the elbow into the school library, pushed me into the book signing chair, and then stormed out of the room. In the car afterward, he threw several books at my head, one at a time.

Dad was losing it. He was losing his charm. He was losing his looks—getting bald, getting paunchy. He was way less successful with women. His dad still sent him a check from time to time, but he basically had no other income.

But there was one thing he still had—another son. A younger, cuter, smarter, and completely available son. Once he shifted his focus onto Liam, I was off the hook. Or, I should say, I was off the hook for author gigs. I was still hanging by my neck off a big meat hook of guilt, another reason I couldn’t face Mrs.

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