Skinny by Donna Cooner

Author:Donna Cooner [Cooner, Donna]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Music, Romance, Mystery, Young Adult, Contemporary
ISBN: 9780545427630
Google: XVWg1oA09zEC
Amazon: 0545427630
Barnesnoble: 0545427630
Goodreads: 11958583
Publisher: Point
Published: 2011-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

It’s the first day of school. When I enter first-period history, I only glance up long enough to get my bearings. That’s surprisingly difficult in this particular classroom. Mr. Landmann, my new history teacher, is also very active in the Huntsville Community Theater and is a requested favorite with students. He somehow combines his two passions, history and theater, in his classroom and it’s crammed full of every kind of historical theatrical prop imaginable. I push down the aisle between a gold spray-painted Henry VIII throne and a life-sized cutout of Magellan. I’m looking for a seat in the back as usual. Not trying to draw attention to myself. Some of the seats are already full. People are talking and chatting. New clothes. New haircuts. New hopes for new starts. One girl playfully shoves a boy. I dodge. I make it to an empty desk in the back corner. One wall behind me. One wall beside me. It feels comfortable. Protected.

The tension from a sleepless night full of first-day-back-at-school nightmares begins to ease up a bit. I pull the desktop up and snap it into place. There’s space between my stomach and the desk. I fit. Mr. Landmann is calling roll, and I almost miss my name. I fit.

“Here,” I say. I scoot around in the desk. There is room to move. To breathe. I stare at my bare forearms on the desk. It’s like someone put the wrong arms on my body. Overnight. They don’t look like me. Arms that don’t look huge and puffy. They just look like arms. Whose arms are these? My eyes fill with tears, and I feel really stupid for reacting like this. It’s just a desk. Everyone else can sit in the desks, too. Why not me?

The bell rings and Mr. Landmann begins lecturing on Tudor England, waving a large papier-mâché sword around wildly. It’s one way to keep teenagers’ attention first thing in the morning. He climbs on top of his desk, wielding the sword, and accidently knocks a stuffed owl off his bookshelf. The now flying owl wakes up the boys who are sitting in the replica of the Santa Maria when it bounces off the mast and lands in their laps. The lecture comes to an abrupt halt while Mr. Landmann recovers the owl, and I hear a voice beside me.

“Ever, right?” I look over at Wolfgang. He’s wearing a camouflage baseball hat that reads, Don’t Mess with Texas.

“Yes,” I say. I can’t remember him actually speaking to me before.

“You look different. Did you get your hair cut or something?”

Right. I got a seventy-two-pound haircut. “Or something,” I say.

“It’s not like you look all that different than before. People can’t even tell you lost weight.”

I spend most of history looking at my arms. I move them slightly back and forth on my desk and watch them respond to my thoughts. I flex my fingers. They really are my arms. I glance up at one point and see Jackson looking at me.

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