o 3852bd5b2f216136 Read Online Free PDF

safe to make him your enemy, Jay surprises you.
    He comes to your house with a brand-new chess set and asks if you want to play. CHESS! By the time you pick yourself up off the floor, laughing, he looks like a hurt puppy. “I thought you LIKED chess,” he says. So you reassure him that you DO like it, and you invite him in to play, and he’s the worst player in the world but he LOVES it, and you teach him a defense or two and he calls you a genus, and all of a sudden you think he’s an okay guy after all.
    And after you’ve beaten him a second time, he agrees to buy you dinner for no reason at all. And when you get to China Wok, you ask him why he’s doing all this stuff — the unexpected visit, the chess, the food — and he says he’s just trying to be friends again. And he tells you he’s worried about you, because you look mad all the time. “Aren’t we still buddies, Duckeroni?”
    And you have to admit, this makes you feel pretty great, even though you have to tell him you HATE his nicknames.
    You explain you’ve been a maniac lately because of the math. You haven’t really BEEN mad, you’ve just LOOKED mad. Which is kind of the truth, but kind of not, because Jay Adams has not exactly been on your list of top ten favorite people these days. Not even top thousand.
    Anyway, he seems relieved, and he offers to help you with homework, but you say no, because HIS help is likely to REEALLY sink your grades. And now that you’re talking like human beings, you finally unload how you feel about his matchmaking — calmly, rationally — and he’s sort of getting it, sort of not, asking you stuff like, “Well, what kind of girl do you like?” when Sunny walks in with Dawn.
    End of conversation. Jay acts like he has never seen a more beautiful sight in the world than Dawn Schafer. Dawn and Sunny sit down with us, and Jay asks Dawn a million questions.
    She’s acting really friendly, probably just humoring him, but they’re having a great time.
    And you’re thinking, hmmm, Dawn and Jay? You wouldn’t have predicted it, but maybe
    opposites attract. And in a funny way, you are jealous, McCrae. Because life seems so easy for Jay. Even though he can be a pigheaded goon, people like him. Girls like him. And why not?
    He’s outgoing. He’s friendly. He’s funny. When you get past all the stuff that makes you crazy, you find a sweet guy. But that’s not the worst part. The WORST part, the thing you really envy, is that it takes SO LITTLE to make him happy.
    The Secret to Contentment, According to Jay Adams: meet a girl.
    The Secret to Contentment, According to Ducky McCrae: Worry about how you look in the morning, because even though you can’t bring yourself to wear boring conservative clothes, you don’t want to risk setting off the Cro Mags. And make sure you don’t bounce too much as you’re walking into school, because Margo the Cro Mag King will say you’re FLITTING, which makes everyone laugh. If you survive THAT, you’re off to a good start, and IF YOU’RE LUCKY
    you’ll have a few laughs with your 13-year-old friends, the only one who seem to appreciate you, and when you go home, you’ll find that your brother has not left the milk out of the fridge all day and has actually bought a few groceries and maybe run a load of laundry with some of your stuff in it. THAT’S contentment. And that’s pathetic.
    So you’re thinking this, and you’re getting mad and frustrated at yourself for being jealous, and your friend Dawn, who otherwise has always been pretty sensible, seems kind of fascinated by Jay, kind of attracted to him, and then …
    We [sic] all order food, and he asks for spare ribs and sweet and sour beef.
    Of course, he has no idea that Dawn is the World’s Number One Health Food Nut, who eats absolutely NO red meat.
    Her face clouds over. Her eyes narrow. She mutters, “Ew.”
    Does Jay leave it alone? No. He asks questions, finds out about her eating habits, and looks at her like