The Friendship Song Read Online Free PDF

yell dumb stuff.”
    â€œIs that all?” I meant it like, wasn’t that bad enough?
    â€œYeah! School is worse than they are.”
    Oh, great. Just wonderful. Maybe she was trying to scare me. I should have known by then that Rawnie played straight with me, but I still hoped she was trying to scare me, because that would mean school wasn’t as bad as she said.
    It was, though. The thing was, if a guy on the street bothered you, you could go away. Or if he got too close to you, you could smack him hard or even kick him where it hurt to make him stop. But in school, you had to stay trapped in the same building as drug-heads or whoever. And if you hit somebody in school for something, you were the one who would get in trouble. I found that out before I even got to homeroom.
    The middle school stuck up like another skinny brick house except six times as big. It looked too big to me, because where I went before, I was in an elementary-school sixth grade with one teacher, but now I was going to have to use a locker and go to different classes and everything.
    There were groups of kids standing all around, and Rawnie steered me between them. Some she said hi to, and others she stayed away from. The “heads,” the ones who looked a lot like the guys on the street corners, she stayed away from because they were the kind who would come up behind you in gym class and pull your shorts down. And she stayed away from the “preps” because they were stuck up. She waved at some guys who looked like real nerds and a skinny guy on a skateboard, but mostly we just talked to girls. They said hi to me when she introduced us, but even when I was talking with them I felt other kids staring at me. I wanted to just shrink, like a Shrinky Dink. I felt too big. Everything about me was too big.
    Kids stared even more when I headed toward the door. Like they’d never seen a new person go into the school early before. But I had to do it whether they stared or not, because I had to get assigned to a homeroom. Rawnie went with me to show me where the office was.
    I didn’t get far, though, because practically first thing when I walked up the steps, before I got to the door even, some zit-faced boy ran up to me and said, “Whatcha got, baby?” and grabbed at the front of my sweater.
    â€œHey!” I whacked him a good one, right across his pimples, to knock him away. There were some other boys watching and laughing, so I guess he did it on a dare. But that didn’t help me any. They all ran, and a woman teacher with three chins had hold of me with one hand and Pimples with the other, and Pimples was whining, “I just said hi to her and she hit me!”
    And of course I couldn’t tell what it was really about. I mean, I’d rather have detention for a month than say he pinched my breast.
    So there I was in the office all right, but not the way I’d expected. Poor dear Pimples had to go to the nurse and get an ice pack because my hand had put a red mark on his face, which I bet did not hurt nearly as much as part of me did, and I was supposed to see the disciplinarian, and I kept telling myself, I am not going to cry. Not. Going. To. Cry. Anything else could happen just as long as I didn’t bawl. I wondered if they still paddled kids here.
    They did. The disciplinarian, who was a big man named Mr. Kuchwald, told me that right away. Not on a first offense, but two more strikes and I was out. It was his job to scare me, and he made sure he did it. He showed me the paddle, which was big. He told me nobody was allowed to hit anybody in his school except him, and he said he hoped I was just off to a bad start and he hoped I was not going to make it a habit to come see him, and then he said, “Do you have anything to say, young lady?”
    I just stood there. So far the not-crying was going okay, but if I tried to say anything, it might mess me up. Anyway, I just wanted out.
    â€œIf