Strays Read Online Free PDF

was.
    â€œForget it,” I said. “I’ll invite the girls over instead.” Little did he know they weren’t really my girls—at least not at the moment. I had blown off meeting them on Pacific this afternoon, and I had ignored all subsequent e-mails and texts. There had been a lot of them to ignore.
    â€œAre you sure?” he asked, eager that he might actually have an out.
    â€œYeah, positive.”
    I had no intention of inviting the girls over. The second he walked out that door smelling of awful cologne and hair gel, I dumped the food into the trash and went to my room.
    I grabbed the hammer from my bedside drawer and went straight to my closet, bearing down on an unaltered section of the wall. I pounded and pounded as the plaster gathered at my feet. When my fingers began cramping from my tight grip, I released the hammer and caught my breath.
    Instantly, I felt a bit better. I rearranged my clothing to cover up any evidence of my anger.

three
    M y performance on this morning’s English final would seal my summer fate. But instead of studying, I had spent the majority of the weekend simply staring at my various textbooks. I had completely memorized the covers: the rendering of the shiny compass on my math book, the portrait of Shakespeare on my book of grammar, and the broad-shouldered matador on my Spanish book—but the books themselves all had remained closed.
    I barely managed to wade through history, Spanish 3, and precalculus. I did okay with history—maybe a B—and I’d be lucky if I got a C-plus in Spanish and math, but at least I knew I passed. I should have been studying more, but everything seemed to distract me. The weekend was kind of a wash. Between marathon music-listening sessions, the next-door neighbor’s dog barking at all hours of the night, and Dad’s cell going off every five minutes (he had that annoyingly loud rumba ring), I had found it difficult to concentrate. Early in the week my computer had pinged at full throttle; the girls were smothering me with instant messages, wondering where I was and why I wasn’t returning any of their phone calls and why in the world Mr. Cagle had wanted to meet with me.
    Finally, when the last day of my junior year of high school arrived, I was determined to get to school on time. While Dad was taking a shower, I filled my Monterey Bay Aquarium souvenir to-go cup with whatever was left in the coffeemaker. I even left the house and was on my bike fifteen minutes earlier than normal.
    Outside, the morning mist reminded me of a Carl Sandberg poem I’d memorized in middle school when I was living in Los Angeles—“The fog comes/on little cat feet”—but in Santa Cruz it was more like tiger paws, thick and dewy until the mid-morning sun burned through the haze.
    As I made my way up Water Street, I kept replaying the past week in my head: the scene in Mr. Cagle’s office, struggling through all those finals, exams that had once come easily to me, when I had the focus and determination to actually sit down and study. Was this how it was going to be from now on? It felt as though I were stuck in a long tunnel with no end in sight. My only solace was thinking about summer break—time I could spend away from school—and then, looking further to the end of next year, when I would be out of high school and heading to college. Away from Dad. Away from Andy. Away from Santa Cruz. It would be a completely fresh start.
    Just then I hit a large crack in the sidewalk, and a loud popping sound came from my back tire, startling me out of my daydream. My handlebars swiveled out of control. Luckily, there were no cars coming as I swerved in and out of the bike lane before hitting the curb and falling over, right next to a bus stop where some Santa Cruz High kids were waiting.
    I wanted to have the perfect, witty thing to say to them as I heaved myself up off the concrete, but instead, keeping my