A Star is Born Read Online Free PDF Page A

because she deliberately messes them up.
    â€œThe girls’ soccer team will meet in the boys’ locker room at three-oh-five,” she announced. “Make sure you bring your equipment, which will include —”
    The mike went dead for a minute and I knew somebody in the office had shut it off. Then Kelly came back on.
    â€œOkay, it’s the boys’ soccer team that will meet in their locker room at three-oh-five,” she said. “Sorry about that, girls. Everybody who has an overdue library book, please note the sign on the media center door that says to return them at once for inventory. If you can’t read you are probably excused from —”
    The intercom went dead again.
    â€œAnd the final announcement is that the Cruisers will meet in Mr. Culpepper’s office at the end of the last period. Anyone who doesn’t show up will be burned at the stake. And have a nice day!”
    â€œYo, Zander, you going to show?” Kambui met me in the hallway.
    â€œWe have to show, I guess, but we need to work out a strategy for LaShonda,” I said.
    â€œOkay, you’re in charge of the strategy,” Kambui said.
    â€œYou couldn’t think of anything, either?” I asked.
    â€œLaShonda said she was just going to say no and walk away from the whole deal because she doesn’t want her business all out there in the street,” Kambui said. “And she definitely doesn’t want it bouncing around Mr. C.’s office.”
    Mr. C. was smart, but as far as kids were concerned he was kind of lame at times. He kept talking about some perfect world and how all we had to do was to follow his road map and we would all get to heaven, make big bucks, and cop some Nobel prizes. When you didn’t follow his program he got pissed and crawled down the back of your neck about what didn’t you understand? What he didn’t understand was that sometimes the world didn’t work according to his logic. You can jump on a scholarship if you’re jumping by yourself, but if you have a little brother to take care of, as LaShonda did, things get hard in a hurry.
    What LaShonda was thinking was that if she never got to college she would have a hard time even supporting her brother once they aged out of the group home. I was feeling her strong.
    Three times a week we have Phys Ed, which means forty-two minutes of hopping around and doing fake push-ups or doing lame exercises on the horse twice a week and one day of just jiving around. Nobody was going to the Olympics and nobody at Da Vinci was being recruited for big college sports except, and only maybe, Cody Weinstein could make a college team if he went Ivy League and changed his mind about playing basketball. His father was athletic director and kept pushing him to play, but they didn’t get along very well. This was our jiving around day, and me, Kambui, Cody, and Alvin played H-O-R-S-E.
    I could beat anybody at H-O-R-S-E any day of the week except for Cody, and sometimes I could beat him. Kambui couldn’t play because he was too busy getting fancy with his short little arms, and he never made any of his shots.
    â€œI talked to LaShonda,” Kambui said. “And she said she wasn’t going for the Virginia Woolf program and she wasn’t going for the perfume company, either. She said she was just going to lay it out to Culpepper and school him on the happenings. Case closed.”
    I went to the corner and threw a jumper that swished cleanly through the net. It looked so pretty I wished I had it on tape. Kambui missed it, so did Alvin, but Cody made it.
    The thing was that I knew it was never simply “case closed” when you were dealing with Culpepper. He was going to run down this and throw in some that and sprinkle in obvious a few times and remind everybody that he was an adult and in charge and we were just kids. LaShonda was right. She had to tell Mr. C. she had made up her mind and