Calling Maggie May

Calling Maggie May Read Online Free PDF

Book: Calling Maggie May Read Online Free PDF
Author: Anonymous
said in Chinese. The school. They called to let her know I ditched class. My heart pounded in my chest so hard I was sure she could hear it.“Check the voice mail,” she said without looking up from her game.
    That’s when it hit me. Mom never answered the phone unless it was a familiar number—someone from our family or the Chinese community. She didn’t trust her English on the phone with strangers, so she let the voice mail get it and had me or my dad listen to it when we got home. This was perfect! I nodded meekly, obediently, and went off to listen to the message. It was the school, reporting me absent for my third- through sixth-period classes. I pressed delete.

Thurs, Nov 13
    Oh God, I’ve never been so humiliated in all my life. I’m such an idiot! Why did I ever get it into my head that I could be like Ada? Ada . . . she’s from a different planet from me. We’re not the same species. As if a dress and some lipstick could change that!
    All right, might as well record my foolishness, so I can read it over every day for the rest of my life as a reminder not to ever do anything risky again.
    We had a swim meet. Remember when this journal was for tracking my success at things like swim meets? Yeah, well, forget it. I did terribly. I just couldn’t focus at all. I don’t know why; it just all seemed so unimportant.
    Anyway, after my terrible swim, I was sitting there watching the boys get ready for the next event, dealing with pitying looks from the coach and a couple people on the team, and there was Tyler and . . . I know what Ada said. I know he’s a creep, but he’s just so incredibly perfect-looking. I haven’t seen the whole world yet, but I swear there is no more beautiful physical specimen of masculinity to be found anywhere.
    And that’s when it came into my head . . . the most terrible idea in the universe. I remembered then and there that I still had Ada’s dress and the lipstick she gave me in my gym bag, and I just thought, what if? What if I put it on? What if I got on the bus home tonight looking like . . . like . . . well, not like Ada, obviously, but like a person. Like a girl, instead of some invisible nothing, like I usually am. Ada said it. She said I could get Tyler if I wanted him. Well, goddammit, I want him, and if willpower and lipstick are all it takes, I have both of those.
    So after the meet we were all getting changed, and I did it. I slipped on Ada’s dress instead of my usual track pants and T-shirt. And I lined up with some of the other girls at the mirror to apply my lipstick. I made a mess of it, of course, because I’d never really done it before, and my hands were shaking with nerves. But eventually, by copying what I’d seen and felt Ada do, I managed a reasonable, not sloppy-looking mouth. Eiko, of course, gave me a hard time about it. She couldnot have acted more shocked and appalled to see me in a dress. I guess it was more than just a dress. I mean, it doesn’t have a whole lot in common with my recital dress. She was all, “What are you doing?” I didn’t know what to say, so I thought about what Ada would do in that situation, and I ignored her.
    When we got on the bus, I was so scared my knees were shaking. But I took a deep breath and got a grip on myself, and I walked right by Eiko and the empty seat next to her and went to the back of the bus. Obviously, it would have been ideal if I could have approached him alone, but I couldn’t think of any way to do that, so I just kept moving forward, deeper and deeper into this terrible plan, letting the momentum of it carry me through.
    Tyler was sitting at the back of the bus, surrounded by all his friends. They were laughing and talking and not paying any attention to me at all. At first. One by one, they started to notice me . . . the friends, that is. Not Tyler. Some of them just
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