Everyday Hero Read Online Free PDF Page B

spikes. “Why? Why go on a carousel, like, a hundred
times?” he asked.
    “Thirty-nine,” I said.
    “Thirty-nine? Thirty-nine ?” His voice rose in a squeak like the bedsprings. “Why?”
    I did not answer because I do not like questions. Questions make me want to bang
my head or curl into a corner.
    He got up. I heard him sigh as he flicked off the light. “Good night,” he said.
    But later, as I lay in my bed, the answer to his question came.
    Because…for that whole wonderful evening, I hadn’t wanted to count or bang my head
or squish myself into a corner.
    Because…for that whole wonderful evening, I was average in type, appearance, achievement,
function and development.
    ***
    “You’ve never stayed out late before. Ever,” Dad said over a breakfast of Cheerios
and milk (I can also eat pancakes, but never eggs, because they smell bad). “You
need to phone if you’re going to stay out after school.”
    “Is that a rule?” I asked.
    “Yes, yes, of course, that’s a rule,” he said loudly. “And that girl—is she the one
who visits here after school?”
    I nodded.
    “She took you to the fair?”
    “I got off the bus and the fair was there.”
    “But she said you should go?”
    “She said her left foot is bigger than her right.”
    “She probably bullied you into it. She looks tough.” Dad opened a cupboard and pulled
out crispy rice cereal, which he likes better than Cheerios. “I don’t know if I want
you to spend time with her.”
    Tough—overly aggressive, brutal or rough .
    “She has bruises because she has bad hand-eye coordination,” I explained, because
maybe Dad thought she fought a lot.
    “Probably in some gang,” Dad said.
    Gang—a group of criminals who band together for protection and profit .
    “I don’t think so,” I said, because Megan usually didn’t spend time with other people.
She walked alone to the bus and sat alone on the bus. She walked around school alone,
with her music so loud I could hear it through her earbuds.
    “Well, don’t spend too much time with her. She’s a bad influence,” Dad said.
    Influence—the action or process of producing effects on the actions and behavior
of others.
    I also wondered what too much meant. I prefer to know exact quantities. Like, I need
eight hours of sleep. I am irritable and tired when I have less than seven.
    But by the time I had formed the question, he had gone into the washroom, and I could
hear the buzz of his electric razor.
    ***
    “You should definitely get a data plan,” Megan said when I saw her at the bus stop
that morning.
    She leaned against the bus stop, her hoodie pulled over her head.
    “Why?” I asked.
    “Duh. Because I was—I wanted to see how you were feeling.”
    “I do not have a headache, a stomach ache or a temperature,” I said.
    “Your dad didn’t get too mad?”
    I shook my head.
    Across from us, the parking lot was a parking lot again. The vans, trailers and rides
were gone, and the tarmac shone slickly wet.
    The bus came and we got in. I sat in the corner where I could feel the vibration
of the engine through my back.
    I glanced at Megan. Her face looked different than it had the night before. Her left
eye was swollen shut and ringed with reddish purple bruises.
    I was glad that even though I have Asperger’s, I do not have bad hand-eye coordination.
    “What happened to your eye?” a guy on the bus asked Megan.
    He stood in the aisle, holding on to the metal pole and looking down at us.
    “What’s it to you?” she said, her lips hardly moving.
    “Got into a fight at the fair, I bet,” the guy said.
    Darren—I remembered his name from English class. He always sat in the back row and
had a miniature skateboard that he would flip on his desktop.
    “Maybe the carnies were fighting over her,” a girl said, standing beside Darren and
swaying as the bus started. She was also in English class. “She looks their type—rough
and greasy.”
    “She didn’t fight,” I