Anything but Normal by Melody Carlson

Author:Melody Carlson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Young Adult, book, ebook
ISBN: 9780800732585
Publisher: Revell
Published: 2010-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

As it turned out, they did get some responses to it. It seemed that Sophie had hit a nerve with a number of people. Including Mrs. Manchester, the woman who headed up the teen pregnancy center at school.

“I’d like to meet whoever wrote this piece,” she told Mr. Young the day after the paper came out.

“Certainly.” He motioned Sophie over and quickly introduced them.

“Well.” Mrs. Manchester just shook her head. “It’s clear that you have no idea what you’re writing about, young lady.”

“What?” Sophie frowned at her, then turned to Mr. Young for support.

“Feel free to use my office to discuss this if you’d like,” he told them.

“Actually . . .” Sophie glanced back to her workstation. “I have work to do here, Mrs. Manchester. If you have an opinion to express, I suggest you write a letter to the editor. We’ll be happy to print it in our next edition.”

Mrs. Manchester looked like she was about to sputter. “Yes, I can certainly do that. Since it’s obvious that you’ve given very little serious thought to what you chose to write about.”

Sophie narrowed her eyes at the woman. “How do you know that?”

“You’re so judgmental. You come across as Miss Know-It-All, but I suspect you’re clueless when it comes to how it feels to be a pregnant teen. You wrote as if you thought girls get pregnant on purpose. Or as if they have no regrets. Clearly you don’t know what you’re talking about. I doubt that any of your friends are pregnant. Are they?”

“Well, not that I know of.”

“See. My point.”

Sophie frowned.

“If you want to be better informed, I suggest you come down to the pregnancy center and spend some time with my girls. Get to know them and get to understand their problems and challenges before you go spouting off your opinions about who they are and how they got there.”

“Well, I don’t—”

“Just as I thought. You don’t care enough about them to actually get involved. You just decided to take potshots from the comfort of your editor’s chair.”

“That’s not true.”

The woman’s brows arched. “Really?”

Now Sophie wanted to sputter.

“I intend to write a letter to rebut your claims, Miss Ramsay. You can count on it.”

Sophie gave her a stiff smile. “And if your invitation is sincere, I’ll come and visit your center and speak to some of the girls there.”

Mrs. Manchester softened ever so slightly. “Perhaps when you see they are human and have feelings, you’ll want to write another piece.”

“Perhaps.” Sophie stood up straighter. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

“Yes, I’m sure we all do.” Mrs. Manchester turned and left the room.

Wes joined Sophie. “Looks like you poked the hornet’s nest with that one.”

“Apparently so.”

“Everything okay?” Mr. Young asked. “Mrs. Manchester seemed a little upset.”

“Ya think?” Sophie just shook her head. “She wants me to come and spend time with her girls now.”

“Hey, that’s a great idea. Maybe you could do a human interest piece. I’m sure that most kids don’t know what goes on in the pregnancy center.

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