A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

guidance counselor, Mr. McAdams, tells me that this isn’t going to win me a coveted spot on any of the Ivy League admissions lists and that this wasn’t exactly what he had in mind when he told me I needed to get more involved in after-school activities. On the other hand, he was so excited when I told him I joined the school newspaper that he actually burst into applause. It was kind of embarrassing. The poor guy seriously needs to get a life. Okay, I know what you’re thinking. So maybe my motive for joining the staff of the
Oaks Gazette
wasn’t purely the love of the printed word, but I’ll have you know that I’m really into being on the school paper. And this has absolutely nothing to do with Zack Meyers because I still haven’t had a conversation with him as remotely involved as the one that morning at the market.
    My first assignment was to write a story on this sophomore kid who won the statewide science project competition. I know that sounds boring, and if you just write a story that says here’s this kid and here’s what his project was and he won a $500 cash prize, that
is
boring. But what I learned in working on this article is that everyone has an interesting story to tell. This kid’s father is a professor at Brandeis University, and he spent a year living in Tanzania when his dad was on sabbatical, and that’s where he got the idea for the farming experiment that won him the science competition. He always had a terrible phobia of bugs, but what he learned in Tanzania was that bugs can be used for positive purposes. So this kid started experimenting with planting and using bugs in the soil, and just like that he overcame his lifelong phobia and won a $500 prize. See? The story has adventure, mystery, and triumph over adversity. My article was like a mini-biography. It was a pretty good story, and I’m sure if I had more time and more print space I could have written a lot more about this kid, who at first seems like a total geek but has a life story as interesting as anyone else’s, at least as interesting as that of anyone else from Twelve Oaks.
    Susan Linder was assigned to take the pictures for the article, not Zack Meyers. But what I’ve managed to learn in my short time at the
Gazette
through both observation and careful questioning of other staffers is that Zack and Amy Flannigan are not going out; they are just best friends who do everything together.
     
    The meeting of the Atheist Student Alliance is taking place in the same room where I have my calculus class, which seems fitting to me because I don’t see how anyone with a mathematical mind can believe in God. It just goes against logic. The group is pretty small and also pretty diverse. I mean diverse in the sense that there are kids from different grades and social circles here. There isn’t a whole lot of racial or even economic diversity at Twelve Oaks, which I know is something that’s always bothered my parents, and that’s why ever since I was pretty young I’ve gone to a city-run summer camp in Boston. I’ve come to agree with them, and now I work there as a counselor. But looking around the room, for such a small group, there is a fair amount of diversity in here. Jasmine Booth-Gray is here. Also Minh Clarkson, my friend who was adopted from Vietnam, is here—the one whose parents have always told him that God sent him to their family. Do they know he’s a member of the ASA?
    Heidi Kravitz is the president, so she runs the meeting. She tells us that on Columbus Day there’s going to be a rally in front of the town hall in support of the town seal and that we’re going to be part of a counterdemonstration. I debate whether I should chime in that my mom is the lawyer who is bringing the case, but this is my first meeting and I don’t want to look like I’m bragging or anything, so I keep quiet. We’re organizing the counterdemonstration with the Young Democrats, and I’m sure if there were a Jewish Student Alliance