Stealing Taffy by Susan Donovan

Author:Susan Donovan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250103147
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Chapter 12

It was exactly 3:32 P.M. when Miss Woowooberry walked out of the Girls Club office, marched across the multipurpose room, and arrived at the table where Fern waited. Fern was sure of the time because she checked the cafeteria clock. She wasn’t taking any chances. She understood that she’d been sentenced to three hours with Tanyalee that day and that’s exactly what the chick would get, and not a minute more.

“Well, hello, Fern!” The woman was wearing pink again. And the same pearls around her neck with the matching earrings. Fern had watched some of those stupid reruns where TV moms made beds and vacuumed in pearls, and she wondered if maybe Tanyalee Newberry was one of those women. She doubted it. More likely she paid someone else to do that crap for her.

“Yo,” Fern said, lifting her chin. “I need to be back at Three-Gee’s at six thirty-two, on the dot.”

Tanyalee pursed her lips in annoyance. Honestly, it was all Fern could do not to bust a gut every time she saw this lady. She was just too much fun to mess with.

“Good afternoon, Tanyalee!” Tanyalee said this to herself, her voice all high and fakelike. She smiled at Fern. “Don’t you think that type of greeting would have been more appropriate than ‘yo’?”

“Yo, yo.” Fern grabbed her backpack. “So what’re we doing today that’s gonna take three whole hours?”

As they strolled together through the club parking lot toward the pink Cadillac, Tanyalee looked over at Fern with a snarky little smile. “You know, Fern, there’s a secret I’d like to share with you. Something that might help you as you mature and experience more of life’s challenges.”

“Oh, yeah?” Honest to God, Fern was going to crack up laughing. “Then lay it on me, Mr. Miyagi. Wax on, wax off! Hee-yah!” She froze with her feet apart, arms bent in karate-chop position.

“Ohmylordinheaven.” Tanyalee unlocked the car door and rolled her eyes. “What I wanted to share with you was that a person’s happiness isn’t determined by what happens to them, it’s how they react to what happens to them.”

“Uh-huh.”

Tanyalee started the engine. “Because we can’t always choose the course of events in our lives. We can only choose how we will handle those events and what actions we will take.”

Fern wanted to suck on the Cadillac’s exhaust pipe. “True dat.”

“So what I’m getting at is you might want to focus your energy on making the most of your time with me instead of being pissed off about it.”

“Gotcha.” Fern let her head loll back against the leather headrest.

“It’s a lesson I didn’t learn until very recently. I wasted a lot of time trying to control other people and what they did. It backfired on me, let me tell you. But now I try every day to let go of things I can’t control and focus on myself—making myself a better person, taking responsibility for my actions.”

“Yeah, so where did you say we’re headed?”

Tanyalee sighed, obviously annoyed that her Oprah master class hadn’t captured Fern’s attention.

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