Sticks & Stones Read Online Free PDF

had toppled over all the way to the floor.
    â€œAnd that’s a wrap!” Mr. Todd hollered like he was announcing the final score of the Super Bowl. “Congratulations, Ami, you’ve made it one step closer to being the Explorer Leader! You have a guaranteed pass into the next round. And great job to all participants! Have a wonderful night, folks, and drive safe.”
    I didn’t get up. Everything itched too much for me to move a muscle.
    From my spot on the floor, I felt Snotty Ami’s snotty footsteps snottily sauntering away. The Loud Crowd followed her, giggling at the top of their lungs like they had some super-hilarious inside joke that regular people would never understand. Jeg paused for a second, stopping to look back at me. And just as I thought she was about to come over and help me up, she turned the other way and left.
    She waved first.
    But still.
    She left.
    â€œYou okay down there? You did a great job, sweetie. That was a tough competition.” Of course, I couldn’t just lie here by myself for a minute. Mom stood over me, her ginormous purse in one hand and a life-size bottle of lotion in the other.
    â€œGrrmrmrrrugh,” I said, which meant Of course I’m not okay! Does it look like I’m okay? But Mom took it to mean, Please roll up my sleeves and slather me with the smelliest anti-itch cream ever and totally embarrass me in front of everyone who’s still here.
    â€œIt’s okay, sweetie,” she said. “Right?” She elbowed Dad in the stomach. “You can still get the job. And you should be really proud of yourself for how long you lasted up there. Second place is fantastic!”
    â€œRight.” Dad glanced up from his phone for about a millisecond. “You did … you were … Hey, just think about something else for now. The average person eats thirty-five thousand cookies in their lifetime. That’s pretty interesting stuff, don’t you think?”
    I answered with an eye roll. Cookies are awesome. Talking about cookies right this second? Not so much.
    â€œYou did a great job, Elyse,” said Nice Andy. He was the only person left on the stage who wasn’t related to me.
    Yeah, so great, I thought sarcastically. That’s why I look like a ghost right now because of all this cream.
    Nice Andy, Mom, and Dad all smiled these huge, wide smiles at me that kinda made me want to cry more. A whole bunch of other people lost, too, I wanted to remind them. Why couldn’t they go smile at someone else?
    I knew they were just trying to be nice. And I liked nice, usually. I needed nice.
    Times like this—when I’m surrounded by smiles I don’t deserve—always made me think about chocolate frosting, for some reason. I ate a whole container of it once. It was the most amazing thing, at first. But after a while, it just made my stomach hurt.
    That’s how it was with me. People were either too mean or too nice. The only real people, the people who always acted good and normal, were Jeg and Liam. And now Liam was gone and Jeg was— Well, I didn’t know what she was, but she wasn’t here.
    But maybe if I got Explorer Leader, she and Liam would give me some good words.
    Slowly, I let Nice Andy pull me up.
    I’d lost, but it wasn’t over.

 
    8
    NICE ANDY
    Nice Andy and I had become friends on the first day of kindergarten, when Dr. Patel came to my class during show-and-tell and talked about CAV. After everything that had happened in preschool, Mom and Dad thought it would be a good idea for him to come talk to the kids in my class, and I totally agreed that it was the most awesome idea ever. A real live person for show-and-tell totally beat a stuffed animal or a light-up race car or any of the other stuff people brought in, no contest. He told the class how CAV made a person very special, but sometimes you had to be careful around special things.
    â€œCan we see it happen?”