The Storyteller by Aaron Starmer

Author:Aaron Starmer
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780374363147
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

OPPOSITE DAY

Kids used to kid about Opposite Day. There was no rhyme or reason to it. On some random day, some popular person would decide, Hmmm, let’s make today Opposite Day. Then everyone would go around saying things like I love you! when what they meant was I hate you! Or they’d say Want to share my lunch? when what they meant was Get your own lunch, you lousy creep!

Of course, no one ever truly meant these things. It was all harmless fun. And it wasn’t real. Until it was.

One sunny morning in April, Felicia Bromley woke up underneath her bed instead of on top of it. This is odd, she thought. Perhaps I was sleepwalking. But it wasn’t that. It was that things were flipped. Opposite. Not everything, of course. But enough things that it caused the world to go haywire.

In Felicia’s closet, all her clothes had changed to the opposite colors. Reds were now greens, blues were now orange, and so on. In the kitchen, instead of cereal in her ceramic bowl, there were pieces of ceramics in a bowl made of cereal. They did not taste good. They were sharp.

A kid was driving the school bus that morning, while a bunch of bus drivers were sitting in the back. Felicia thought it best to walk. When she reached school, she found that school was inside out, with the desks and blackboards all surrounding the building and the grass and sports fields inside of it.

“Can you believe it?” Felicia’s friend Marcy said. “Opposite Day has become a real thing!”

“Well,” Felicia replied, “if you say that’s true, then wouldn’t it make it false, and if it’s false, then…”

It was a confusing time, to say the least.

As the day went on, madness was the norm. Felicia failed a test in math (she always aced them), dunked a basketball in gym (she’d never even been able to dribble), and ate the most delicious meal of her life (from the school cafeteria, of all places). Some kids loved the changes. Others hated them. No one could deny that the day was interesting at least.

School schedules must have been immune to Opposite Day, because classes let out the same time they always did. But instead of going straight home to do homework (which was her daily obligation) and to sew sock puppets (which was her daily hobby), Felicia spent the afternoon making out with Lance Garrison under the bleachers at the football field. Lance Garrison was the coolest kid in school, not the type of guy who would normally give Felicia the time of day.

“I love you,” Lance told her as he caressed her face.

“I hate you,” Felicia told him as she stroked his chest.

“What?” he said.

“It’s Opposite Day,” Felicia said. “We mean the opposite.”

“So I don’t really love you?” Lance asked.

Yep. Confusing.

“Let’s just appreciate this moment for what it is,” Felicia said.

“So, we’re not supposed to appreciate it?” Lance asked.

“I don’t know, just—” And instead of talking, Felicia went back to kissing,

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