The Amazing Life of Birds Read Online Free PDF Page B

to worry about. It was all a mistake. Even the boy who was thought to have ringworm is disease free.”
    He didn't say my name. But he didn't need to. Everybody in school knew Doo-Doo the Zit Boy!
    The boy who brought the bald spots to school.
    Now disease free.
    It was nice of the principal to announce it over the intercom. It wasn't embarrassing. No more than, say, walking around school naked.
    Where was Ferris Bueller's Rottweiler when you needed it?

Day Fourteen

    “Look,” my father said the next morning, drinking coffee over the sink while he read the paper. “There was an epidemic scare at your school yesterday. You didn't get exposed to anything, did you?”
    “Are you sick?” my mother cut in. “Do we need to have you checked at the clinic?”
    “Of course he's sick.” My sister had three strands of hair in the wrong place and was trying to relocate them without disturbing the rest of her head. “Have you
smelled
him? How can he stink like that and
not
be sick?”
    I couldn't look at the cereal box. The rooster was gone and in his place …
    “They say,” I started, “that there's a lot to be saidfor homeschooling. You learn more. You can study longer and there's less hassle.”
    “Homeschooling? What? We don't do that. We pay taxes.” My father was proud of that. He paid taxes. “They pay for the school. You go to the school. That's how it all works.”
    Yeah. It works really well. I go in today and they'll probably burn me at the stake.
    For the first time in my life I almost skipped school. I think I would have except for Willy.
    The night before I was sitting in my room and staring at the wall. Not the poster wall. The blank wall. I was ready to go backward. This whole puberty thing wasn't working out for me at all and every day just seemed to get worse.
    So I called Willy.
    “All right, when you burned your hair, were you embarrassed?”
    Willy snorted. “No more than if I had peed my pants in church …”
    “Well, how did you handle it?”
    “You drive on. I acted like I meant it. Like I was experimenting with hair burning. Why? What happened?”
    So I told him. The whole day, ringworm, disease, all of it. And when I finished there was a little pause and then: “Cool.”
    “Cool?”
    “Absolutely. The coolest.”
    “Were you listening to me?”
    “You bet.”
    “Ringworm, disease, bald spots is cool?”
    “Totally.”
    “Explain that to me.”
    “You have to think of it as an opportunity.”
    “Oh, sure. An opportunity for everybody in school to hate me.”
    “That's
it.
The magic word. Everybody. Everybody in school knows who you are, right?”
    “I can't deny that. Everybody knows I'm Doo-Doo the Diseased Monster slithering up and down the halls.”
    “That doesn't matter.”
    “Speak for yourself. I'm planning to wear a bag over my head.”
    “Think.
Everybody
knows who you are. Every single kid in the school. It's perfect.”
    “Willy?” I thought he'd gone out of his mind.
    “All you have to do is something good.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “You do something good now, something cool, and you're in. Everybody will see it.”
    “You really think so?”
    “I just wish it had happened to me.”
    “Right.”
    “No. Seriously. Everybody knows who you are. You do something really cool now and they'll all know it right away. It's simple.”
    In Willy's world, it really was simple.
    But Willy's world wasn't mine.
    He didn't understand what a destructive device a shoelace can be.

Day Fifteen

    A word on cafeteria food: ELBOW.
    Well, not really. But many of the words the kids use to describe the cafeteria food are not printable.
    The most accurate one I've heard was
sludge.
    Or Desiccated Dinosaur Droppings.
    Personally, I don't really know what they have to do to actually make macaroni and cheese as bad as it is, but it's amazing. Most of the time it's inedible.
    Still, at a certain time we are all herded into the cafeteria and we move down a line and this …