Going Wild Read Online Free PDF

hallway earlier. Carmelita kept Charlie on the move fetching things.
    At first Charlie didn’t know the difference between upstage and downstage, and she had stage right confused with stage left, so she wasn’t very useful. But Carmelita and the other crew members helped her out, and by the end of the class period she was feelingmore confident. Despite her initial confusion, she really liked the unstructured atmosphere of theater class and the friendly students. The fact that there was no homework wasn’t bad either.
    Every now and then Charlie glanced at Kelly, who was fully in her element as one of the lead actors in this musical. She rehearsed scenes in the back of the auditorium with fellow actors who often asked her advice on how to deliver their lines. Charlie wondered what sort of mean things Kelly would say after class about them.
    When the bell rang, Charlie caught up with Kelly as usual. Walking to their last class, Kelly was preoccupied with texting, even though they weren’t supposed to be on their phones during school. They passed two teachers on their trek to the language arts building, but neither of them seemed to care. Maybe Kelly had special powers with teachers, too.
    â€œIs everything okay?” Charlie asked when Kelly stopped outside the classroom door to finish texting.
    â€œUgh, parents,” said Kelly, not looking up.
    â€œYeah, tell me about it,” agreed Charlie. “They’re the worst.”
    â€œFor sure.” Kelly put away her phone and stared at Charlie for a long moment, as if she was going to say something more. But then the warning bell rang, and the look on her face went away. The two dashed into the room and separated, Kelly to her desk and Charlie to get her final seat assignment of the day.
    The teacher gave her a seat by the window. As Charlie stared outside at the tops of the barren tree branches, her mind wandered.She was exhausted from the new faces and questions. All day long, students and teachers had wanted to know why Charlie’s family had moved in the middle of the semester, and what kind of jobs her parents had, and how she liked it here. And she’d answered them all, over and over again, to be polite. Now the day was almost over, and Charlie couldn’t wait to call Amari and tell her about it.
    A wave of homesickness swept through her. She wondered how long it would take her to walk back to Chicago.
    â€œCharlie?” the language arts teacher said, interrupting her thoughts. “Something interesting going on out there?”
    Charlie whipped her head around to face the front, her cheeks growing warm “Sorry,” she said. “Just . . . doing a, um, a math problem in my head that I was stuck on in, um, in math class. Earlier, I mean,” she mumbled. She glanced across the room at Kelly for support, but Kelly was whispering something to the boy in front of her. The boy glanced sidelong at Charlie.
    Charlie shifted uncomfortably. Was Kelly talking about her now? She forced herself to face the whiteboard, where the teacher was pointing to a sentence and talking about direct objects, but her mind swam.
    Finally the bell rang at the end of the day, and Charlie couldn’t be more ready for it. Flustered and not sure what to say to Kelly, she decided a hasty thank-you would do. She smiled weakly and ran out of the language arts building, reoriented herself to the lockers, and then followed the masses to the pick-up area in thecircle drive. She scanned the line of cars, looking for her dad.
    When she finally found him, she walked rapidly toward their car and climbed inside.
    â€œLet’s go,” she said, closing the door.
    Her dad pulled away from the curb. “How was it?” he asked, his voice guarded. It was like he already knew.
    Charlie clipped her seat belt together, then leaned her head against the headrest, closed her stinging eyes, and sighed, exhausted. “I want to go back to