Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick

Author:Jordan Sonnenblick
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Illnesses & Injuries, Diseases, Family, Health & Daily Living, Juvenile Fiction, General, Siblings, Fiction, School & Education
ISBN: 9780439951296
Publisher: Scholastic
Published: 2006-08-07T19:09:15.131341+00:00

THE SILVER LINING

OK, a quick status report, as of the end of January:

1. My family was plunging into poverty.

2. My brother had no immune system.

3. My mom had no job.

4. My dad was working about ninety hours a week and appeared to be on the verge of flipping out completely.

5. The hottest girl in the eighth grade came to my house to tutor me, and I booted her off of my property.

6. I was definitely going to fail my math final.

But on a brighter note, my strange, tragedy-induced popularity at school was growing. Word got around that Steven Alper was the guy who kicked Renee Albert to the curb, and people just decided I must be the MAN. Annette was especially thrilled with the whole story for some reason; maybe she figured she’d have no competition for Tutor of the Year now.

Of course, every male I knew thought that sending Renee home made me the Idiot Boy of East Village Middle School, but they still felt an odd sort of admiration for me. It was like I had resisted the spell of a fearsome enchantress—everyone else was under that spell and COULDN’T resist it, so they assumed I had some secret strength. It didn’t matter that they were wrong, that every time Renee walked into homeroom and glared at me, I was torn between two equally powerful urges: to run up to her, drop to one knee, and propose or to run away from her and cry in the boys’ bathroom for an hour. All they saw was a guy who sent the Cheer Queen packing.

Weird.

Annette met with me after school a bunch more times that last week, my brother and mom went to Philly and returned, I played drums and did homework, meals got nuked and consumed, the sun rose in the East and set in the West. Numbness was setting in, but I had just enough oomph left to get me through finals.

I wound up with As and Bs in English, science, social studies, and Spanish, and a big, fat D in math. Mrs. Galley called me into her office one Friday to break the news.

Candy heart, Steven?

Last time I had been there, I practically had to donate blood to get a candy heart. Now she was leading off by offering me one? That right there was enough to tell me she hadn’t sent for me so she could award me an honor roll T-shirt.

What did I do wrong, Mrs. Galley? I made up every scrap of work in every class, I got a tutor, I studied like a monk…

You got a thirty-seven on your math final.

Huh, how ‘bout that? I thought for sure I’d get at least a thirty-nine with that extra credit problem about the two trains.

Steven, I’m truly sorry. You made an incredible effort right up until the end.

Yeah, so did the dodo bird, the passenger pigeon, Vanilla Ice…

How are your parents going to take this news? I know you were quite concerned about their reaction when you had all that homework to make up.

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