The Amazing Life of Birds by Gary Paulsen

Author:Gary Paulsen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307512512
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2006-04-09T21:00:00+00:00

Day One

I went for it. No Band-Aids, no hair spray. I headed out to school like I was proud of all those zits and the bald spot. I had earned the right to be ugly.

And for a little while—fifteen or twenty seconds— it seemed to be working. Until I opened my locker and took out my books for first period.

Right then Amber walked by and I turned with a flourish, kind of swinging my books around while I slammed my locker door and said, “Hi, Amber.”

In one fluid motion.

That was the plan.

What really happened is that my tongue wouldn't work, couldn't form the words Hi, Amber. Instead it seemed to stick to the roof of my mouth and make a sound like a little outboard motor: “Nnnnnnnnggh.”

While I slammed the locker door, forgetting that my thumb was on the edge. The locker door latched. With my thumb stuck in the seam.

At least it was one fluid motion.

I didn't actually scream. It was more like a bleat, kind of a cross between no sound at all and what would happen if a semi ran over a duck. A big duck.

I almost wet my pants.

Books flew—Amber had to dodge my history homework—and my tongue continued to make that squashed-duck sound and I tried to act like it was something that happened to me all the time.

Mr. Cool.

I reached around with my free hand and, with one eye closed because of the pain, I worked the combination and opened the locker door.

Gym was volleyball again and at least this time the boys and girls were separated so I couldn't cripple some poor girl.

Like Rachel.

The girls were playing at the other end of the gym. For a few minutes things almost worked out. My thumb hurt when I hit the ball but that seemed to lessen as we played.

I made a couple of good setups and then one pretty fair spike and I hoped that somebody from the other end was watching.

Like Rachel.

But when I looked all the girls were in a circle choosing teams, and missed me being cool.

The thing is I don't know why Amber and Rachel were important to me. Neither of them even really knew I existed.

Now that I had loused up in front of them I wanted to impress them when I wasn't such a mess.

Not that such a thing could ever happen.

We played on and I kept an eye on the other end of the gym hoping that Rachel would turn and see me at least once.

One of the boys on the other team had a smashing serve that just barely cleared the net and came in like a cannonball.

I glanced at the girls. Rachel happened to be facing the boys' end of the gym.

Just as the rifling ball caught me dead in the face, splattering my nose, driving me back and down to the floor bleeding, and worse, tripping two other players, who tripped other players, who tripped …

Pretty much the whole team went down and the last thing I saw was Rachel.

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