Five Flavors of Dumb Read Online Free PDF

eye, I saw Mom flinch.
    “Gee, thanks, Dad. That’s especially meaningful coming from someone who can’t even change a diaper.”
    “What’s that?” asked Mom, grateful for the change of topic.
    “Dad ended up with Grace’s poop all over his shirt this afternoon.”
    “That’s enough,” he said sternly.
    Mom tried to rein it in, but then she let loose an unsavory snort, which got me laughing. A moment later Grace erupted in chortling too, face aglow as she bounced up and down in her high chair. Suddenly I was laughing even harder, and I would have kept laughing if I hadn’t realized that in the space of a day Grace had gone from profound deafness to hearing probably more than me. I knew I should have been thrilled for her, but instead I was so overwhelmed with jealousy I wanted to scream. I understood that I was being unreasonable, but if I could I’d have ripped her implant off right there and then.
    I looked around the table, wondering how I’d become so frustrated with the rest of my family so quickly. And as I sat there pondering how to escape feeling so wretched, the only thing that offered any relief at all was completely and utterly Dumb.

CHAPTER 8
    Wednesday lunch was chess club, an opportunity for me to inflict swift and decisive defeats on anyone who dared to take me on. Which is to say, Ed Chen.
    Ed’s strengths did not lie in his chess acumen. In fact, it was entirely unclear to me why he continued to subject himself to successive thrashings, but I was grateful for it. Even though I was captain of the school team—a team in name only; we hadn’t taken on another school in almost a year—I couldn’t get anyone else to play me.
    Ed was white again—like having the first move was any kind of advantage—and he commenced with his standard opening, shuffling a pawn forward two spaces. I sometimes wondered if he kept doing it to lure me into complacency, that one day he’d sense my apathy and unleash his full arsenal of devastating moves, his bishops assaulting my defenseless pawns. But after a year of identical openings, I suspected he wasn’t holding anything back; there simply wasn’t anything there.
    Not that Ed wasn’t talented. He’d been principal percussionist of the Seattle Youth Orchestra since he was thirteen, and seemed destined to follow in his mom’s footsteps by attending one of those prestigious conservatories on the East Coast. He was pretty open about it even, although he never came across as cocky, just confident.
    I countered his pawn shuffle by advancing one of my own pawns, blocking his path. It was a throwaway move, but he responded like I’d exhausted his options. He scratched his head, leaving his thick dark hair standing upright, and scrunched his face until I could barely see his deep brown eyes. Even his cheeks had a cute rosy glow. When he speculatively nudged another pawn forward, the move seemed to cause him such grave discomfort I could barely keep a straight face.
    “I’ve agreed to manage that rock band Dumb,” I said, breaking the silence.
    Oddly, Ed didn’t seem surprised. “What do you think of them?” he asked.
    I wasn’t sure what I thought of them because I couldn’t really hear them, so I just shrugged. “It’s just a joke really, I guess.”
    Ed’s eyes narrowed. “I disagree. I thought their performance on Monday was quite compelling.”
    I was shocked. “You were there?”
    “Sort of. I was watching from the second floor. And for the record,” he said, raising an eyebrow, “I noticed that you and Kallie Sims were the only ones who stayed for the whole performance. Odd behavior for someone who thinks Dumb is a joke.”
    I felt myself blush. Was everyone watching me from behind the safety of a school window?
    I stealthily positioned my knight as decoy, while setting up my queen for a devastating attack. Ed responded defensively, throwing a sacrificial pawn in my way. The game could have been over in just two more moves, but talking to