Who's 'Bout to Bounce? by Deborah Gregory

Author:Deborah Gregory [Gregory, Deborah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-7769-0
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2011-08-24T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter

8

It’s “five after three” and I’m trying not to “see what I see.” My foster mother is standing right outside my school, right next to troublemaker Teqwila Johnson and her posse! What is Mrs. Bosco doing here, anyway? Something must be wrong.

I’m ’bout to bounce, but Mrs. Bosco sees me before I can make my move. “Hi, Mrs. Bosco,” I say with a smile, trying to act normal.

I always call her Mrs. Bosco, even when we’re in public, so kids don’t make fun of how she looks. The first time she came to my school, I was in the first grade, and kids teased me the whole year, saying, “That’s not really your mother! She’s ugly!”

“What you are doing here?” I ask my foster mother nicely. Mrs. Bosco doesn’t really like huggy, kissy stuff, especially in public, but I would really like to smooth the wrinkles down on her hot pink dress, which is shaped just like a tent.

“I just wanted to surprise you,” Mrs. Bosco says, grinning from ear to ear.

Suddenly I feel sick to my stomach. I remember the day when I was almost five years old, and Mrs. Parkay was really nice to me for the first time. That was the very day the caseworker, Mrs. Domino, came to take me away.

“You’re going to live with really nice people,” she had said, as she held my hand and we crossed the street together. Is that what Mrs. Bosco is gonna tell me now? That I’m going to live somewhere else, with “really nice people”?

Well, I’m going away on tour with Mo’ Money Monique, anyway, I remind myself. And I’ll be gone a whole year. So it doesn’t really matter whether she wants me or not. So there!

All of a sudden, I start to notice all the things about my foster mother that really bother me. Like her false teeth, which she takes out at night, and puts in a glass of water on her dressing room table. And her thick mustache! Why can’t she wax it off like most ladies do? And her really thick bifocal glasses!

And why didn’t she wear the dope brown dress I made for her, with the big, oversized patch pockets in the front? Why couldn’t she wear it to school if she really loves me?

I decide that I can’t let Bubbles and Chanel see her—not looking like this. “I’m not gonna wait for Galleria and Chanel today, so we can leave now,” I say to Mrs. Bosco, praying we can make it to the subway station before the dynamic duo come breaking out of school, which will happen any minute now.

“No, baby. I wanna see—I mean, meet your friends. You never bring them over to the house,” Mrs. Bosco says, still smiling.

“I heard that!” Teqwila Johnson says loudly, letting out a big laugh like the stupid hyena she is. She whispers something to her friend Sheila Grand, whose last name fits her, because she’s always acting like she’s large and in charge.

Both of them are in my Draping 101 class, and they never even talk to me.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.