Friends Forever Read Online Free PDF Page A

when she walked in. Izzie thought all of the moms in the group were nice, except sometimes her own, because she was so busy, had so much work to do, and she came home so tired from the office that she sometimes forgot to give Izzie a hug. But her dad never forgot. He gave her piggyback rides around the house, and took her to movies and the park. Being with her friends made Izzie wish she had a sister or brother sometimes, but she knew there was no hope of that. She had asked her mother about it, and she said she didn’t have time, and she was older than the other mothers. Katherine Wallace was forty-two, and Izzie’s dad was forty-six. They said they felt too old to have another child, and her father always said that they didn’t want one because they knew they’d never have one as great as she was. But Izzie knew it was an excuse, they just didn’t want more kids.
    It was almost the end of the school year when Kevin O’Hara got into trouble again. Izzie heard about it from Sean, when they traded lunches in the schoolroom. She knew that something bad had happened because Connie hadn’t driven carpool for two days. In the end they had kept their carpool to the three mothers, and this week Connie had missed both her days, and when Marilyn and Judy took turns driving for her, neither of them said why. Izzie sensed trouble right away.
    “It’s Kevin,” Sean said when he traded Izzie her apple for a pink cupcake he didn’t want. Izzie always had healthy food he liked better. She gobbled up the pink cupcake and had pink icing all over her lips and nose, which made him laugh.
    “What are you laughing at?” she asked him, looking insulted.
    He teased her a lot, but she liked him anyway, he was her friend, kind of like a brother, only better since he never hit her. He had pushed a fourth-grader once who had called her a name.
    “I’m laughing at you. You’ve got pink icing on your nose.” She wiped it on her sleeve, and he went on. “Kev got in trouble at the school dance. My dad says he might get expelled. He had to stay home this week. He’s suspended or something.”
    “What did he do? Get in a fight?” Izzie knew he had done that before. It wasn’t unusual for him, and his mother said it was his hot Irish blood. But their father never seemed to get into fights and he was Irish too, just Kevin.
    “He took a bottle of my dad’s liquor to the dance and put it in the punch. I think it was gin. Anyway, they all got really drunk, and so did Kevin. He threw up all over the boys’ bathroom at the dance.”
    “It’s a good thing you don’t share a room with him anymore, if he threw up all over the place,” Izzie said wisely. They had given Sean his own room when he turned six and Kevin was thirteen. “It must have smelled awful,” she said practically and Sean nodded, remembering how Kevin looked when they brought him home.
    “Yeah, and my dad was really mad. The school called him that night, and my dad had to go to pick him up. He had alcohol poisoning, and they had to take him to the emergency room and get him some medicine or something. My mom’s been crying all week, she’s really scared they’re going to kick him out, and I guess his grades aren’t so good either.” It sounded serious to both of them.
    “Wow. When will you know if they’re kicking him out of school?”
    “Sometime this week, I think.” Sean wasn’t sure. His parents had had endless conversations about it with Kevin, but only one with him. And they were sending Kevin to an outdoor adventure camp for the summer, for kids who’d gotten in trouble in school. Their description of it sounded very unpleasant to Sean. You had to do a lot of really hard things like rock climbing, and hiking up a mountain, and spending a night alone in a forest, which sounded really scary to Sean. He was worried about his brother. He had overheard their father telling him that at the rate he was going, he was going to wind up in jail. Sean hoped that