Laugh Till You Cry Read Online Free PDF

indiscretion sometime serves us well When our deep plots do pall.”
    Cody felt as though a giant eraser had swept through his mind. It was a total blank. What had his grandma told him?
    “To begin with, what does ‘rashness’ mean?” Ms. Jackson prompted.
    “ ‘Rashness’ … uh … oh, doing something without, uh, thinking about it first, like whether or not it was a good idea,” Cody stammered.
    “That’s right. So take it from there. Why did Hamlet say ‘praised be rashness’?”
    Cody stared at the page. “They … uh … did something without thinking about it, which was rash, but rashness works out okay when plots pall … uh, fail. If their plots fail.”
    He shifted in his seat, and his book fell to the floor with a crash.
    Jennifer gave a loud sniff and rolled her eyes, and he heard Hayden snicker.
    As Cody bent to pick up his book, his face flushed hot. He knew it was probably bright red and he’d made everything even worse. But he straightened up to see Ms. Jackson walking to the other side of the room.
    She said, “Thank you, Cody. You’re on the right track.” Then she read:
    “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends
,
    Rough-hew them how we will.”
    She called on a kid named Paul, and he began to answer. Paul seemed nice enough. Cody had seen him drawing pictures—especially of horses—all over his notebook. Cody tried to listen, but all he could think about was how he had stumbled through a really dumb answer. Hayden would probably never let him forget it.
    When the lunch bell rang, Cody headed to his locker. He pulled his lunch bag from the shelf, but he didn’t hurry with the others toward the cafeteria. He saw Hayden’sStupid Squad up ahead, waiting for him. Wanting only to be alone, Cody walked down the hall in the opposite direction and slipped out the side door he’d discovered the day before. He sat on the bottom step of the small alcove, resting his back against the cement wall. It was cool in the shade, in spite of the Texas heat.
    He munched on the peanut butter and jelly sandwich his mother had made for him and thought about his home and school in Santa Olivia. Tears blurred his vision, and he rubbed angrily at his eyes with the back of one hand. He wasn’t going to cry. Not here! Not now!
    For what seemed like a long time, Cody leaned against the wall and thought about the good old days in Santa Olivia. Suddenly he jumped as the electronic bell over the door slammed against his ears in a rapid beat.
    A fire drill? At lunchtime?
    He was tempted to stay where he was, but he knew that would just mean trouble, so he got to his feet and began to jog around the corner of the building toward the quadrangle in back, where the classes were supposed to line up during emergency drills.
    As he entered the gate, Cody ran straight into Coach Anderson, who grabbed his shoulders to steady him. She didn’t let go, but stared down at him, checking him over, inch by inch. She frowned at the phone clip on his pocket. “What are you doing out here?” she demanded.
    “I was eating lunch,” Cody said. “I brought it today. My lunch sack—” He glanced down at his empty hands. “I guess I left it on the stairs.”
    “On the stairs is not in the cafeteria, where
all
students are supposed to eat lunch,” she said. “Even though you’re a new student, you should know that.”
    “I do know,” Cody said. He tried to shrug but couldn’tsince she still had a grip on his shoulders. “I—I just felt like being alone.”
    The bell kept up its insistent clamor, and Cody’s head began to hurt.
    Coach Anderson stepped back, dropping her arms. “Hurry. Get in line with your class. Every student has to be accounted for.”
    Cody took off at a run and skidded to a stop at the end of the lines in front of Ms. Jackson, who was also his homeroom teacher. “What’s with the fire drill at lunchtime?” he asked Jennifer, who was standing next to him, but at that moment the bell went