Too Cool for This School Read Online Free PDF Page A

mother could see that I was beyond alarmed, so she pulled me to her side. “Everything is fine.”
    “But why are you here?” I asked. Moms didn’t just show up to school when everything was fine.
    “Congratulations!” the secretary said as she passed me. “It’s always wonderful when family moves to town.”
    I had no idea what she was talking about. “Mom?” I said.
    “Lane,” Robin called. “We need to line up for the photo.”
    “I’m coming,” I said. But I wasn’t going to come until my mother told me what was going on. The only relatives I had lived in Alaska. Aunt Betina and her daughter, Angelina. Her father, Uncle Dave, had divorced Aunt Betina several years ago and was working in Toronto. My dad called him a deadbeat.
    “Your cousin, Angelina, is coming to town,” said my mother very cautiously.
    “Really?” I said. “I thought Aunt Betina loved Alaska. I never thought she’d move.”
    “Lane!” Robin called.
    “Aunt Betina isn’t moving,” my mom said very quietly.
    That didn’t really make any sense. How could Angelina move and not Aunt Betina?
    And then my mother did something surprising. She called out to Robin. “Lane will be there in a minute. I need her help in the bathroom.”
    Why would my mother yell anything about a bathroomwhile inside my school? I wanted to die. Instead of dying, I hurried behind her to figure out what was going on.
    “This isn’t how I wanted to tell you,” my mother said, standing beside the paper-towel dispenser.
    “Tell me what?” I said kind of rudely. “I can’t be late for the photo.”
    “Listen, I want you to know that sometimes in life you find yourself doing something that lacks honesty,” she said. “And you do this thing not because you want to be dishonest, but because there is no other way.”
    “I don’t understand what you’re telling me,” I said.
    “I’ll give you the truncated version,” she said. “Aunt Betina finally decided to marry Clark. And they’ve decided to honeymoon for a month. Her child care fell through. Angelina is coming to live with us.”
    Honeymoon for a month? Child care fell through? What kind of terrible mother was Aunt Betina?
    “Stop making that face,” my mother said. “This will be a once-in-a-lifetime chance for you and your cousin to bond. It will be good for everyone.”
    “Uh, I don’t know about that, Mom,” I said. We didn’t have a spare bedroom, so I tried to imagine where Angelina would sleep.
My room?
There was only one sixth-grade class at my school, so that meant she’d be in
my class
. Would she eat lunch with me too? Would she expect to hang out with all my friends? For how long?
    “I was hoping for a more positive reaction,” my mom said.
    “How long will she stay?” I asked.
    “A month,” my mom explained. “I told you her child care fell through.”
    “A month!” I stared at my mom like she was crazy.
    “It’s the perfect amount of time for two people to bond.”
    I’d only met my cousin a couple of times at family reunions, and we hadn’t really
bonded
during those times. I tried to remember what she looked like and how she behaved, but I couldn’t.
    “The school district wouldn’t allow a visitor to come for a month. So I had to change Angelina’s permanent address to ours. That’s why I’m here.”
    “Really?” I asked. That seemed illegal. “When is she coming?”
    “Friday,” my mother said.
    “Friday!” I yelled. That was way sooner than I expected.
    The bathroom door creaked open. It was Robin. “Hey, I’m sorry, but we really need Lane out front. We’re paying the photographer by the hour. Plus, he needs to get to a dog show.”
    “Okay,” I said.
    I turned to leave, but my mother put her hand on my shoulder and stopped me.
    “I think it would be best if you didn’t tell anybody about this,” she said. “We’re fudging the rules a little bit.”
    I flipped back around so quickly that I banged into my mother’s bulging purse.