The Life of Ty by Lauren Myracle

Author:Lauren Myracle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-03-11T04:00:00+00:00

It’s a very good fake one-hundred-dollar bill. I transport it carefully to my desk and put it inside.

Then I remember my manners and go back and stand above her. “Um, thanks.”

“Yeah-yeah, sure-sure,” she says, hard at work on a new one. “Just don’t spend it all in one place, kid.”

CHAPTER SIX

After school, I go on errands with Mom and Baby Maggie. Mom calls it a “date” since it is kind of just the two of us, since Maggie doesn’t talk yet and is still in her cute houseplant stage (except when she cries), but really it is just errands.

That’s okay. I like the way the dry cleaner smells and how the lady pushes a button and vroooom! All the clothes on their hangers move closer like a giant centipede with swishy legs.

I like the bank because I like putting my elbows on the counter and JUMP-ing up so that my weight is on my forearms and my feet are dangling off the floor. The bank lady scowls at me—there is a sign that says PLEASE DO NOT PUT YOUR CHILDREN ON THE COUNTER—but Mom doesn’t make me get down, because she didn’t put me there. I put me there myself. So, ha. I would rather not be scowled at, but I would also rather not stop dangling.

Our last stop of the afternoon is the mall, which is huge and filled with grown-up stores, and I’m worried Mom is going to want to go clothes shopping for herself. When she goes clothes shopping, it is b-o-r-i-n-g. I have to sit in the dressing room while she puts on clothes and takes off clothes and puts on clothes and takes off clothes. Sometimes there are fun-ish plastic tags on the floor to collect, and once I found a whole bunch of staples, but still. It’s not a free-choice activity I’d ever pick.

“Mom, no shopping,” I tell her when she pauses outside a window display. The mannequin is wearing a scarf. Scarves are dumb. “We’re here to buy Dad a belt, remember?”

Dad has a work trip coming up. He needs a belt. I don’t know why, except I guess to hold his pants up.

I pull her along three other times from clothes, one time from high heels, and one very firm time from the makeup area. “Mom, no,” I say in my stern voice.

Then, after we buy Dad a brown belt, we pass a kids’ shoe store. On a shelf-thing right inside the door is a pair of black high-tops, just like Lexie’s, only better! Lexie’s black high-tops are sparkly. These black high-tops have paint splattered all over them. White paint and red paint and green paint and blue paint, dribble-dribble-drop-drop over every inch of them!

“Mom!” I say, stopping dead still.

Mom, who is pushing Baby Maggie in her stroller, halts. She looks alarmed. “Ty?”

I grab her arm. I bend my knees and pull on her, and then I quit because she’s told me how much she doesn’t like it when I do that.

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