Unpopular: An Unloved Ones Prequel #3 (The Unloved Ones) Read Online Free PDF

determined to make good on my word. I stop by the vending machine on the way and get another can of Red Bull. I can do this. I can make things go back to normal, and forget this whole crazy thing ever happened.
    I get back to class and throw away the empty can on my way to my desk. I sit up straight, and when the kids in class look at me, I’ve got my casual grin back on my face. It says: I can do this. It says: Things are back to normal. It says: Everything’s fine.
    A week later, I miss the next game too.
     
     

Chapter Three

 
    It wasn’t all my fault. I mean, I couldn’t help it.
    First, I spent the weekend locked away in my room. It was just as well; I don’t think I would have gotten invited to any parties anyway. My mom brought me meals like a warden, and I ate on my bed.
    I didn’t sleep Friday night, not until dawn. Then I had trouble staying awake once the sun was up.
    Saturday night was the same.
    And when Sunday night was the same, I knew that I’d never be able to stay awake for school on Monday.
    I was in such a daze, I honestly don’t even remember the school day. There was still enough good will toward me then that students would shake my shoulders when class was over, and prompt me to go to the next period.
    I slept through lunch. I slept on the bus ride home.
    Practice was thankfully cancelled due to a teacher’s meeting, and instead my dad made me throw the ball in the backyard for three hours after supper. My mom didn’t comment.
    Tuesday was worse. The morning light physically hurt my eyes, and the whispers of all the other students seemed turned up a notch. I drank so much Red Bull that the vending machine ran out, and I was still tired.
    At lunch, I discovered the study rooms in the school library. These are small cubbies of rooms meant to give private study. I locked myself in one, shut off the light, and passed out on the desk.
    I didn’t hear the bell ring. Or the next one. Or the next.
    I slept there until the sound of a vacuum cleaner woke me up. When I stumbled out, I startled a cleaning woman half to death.
    It was night. That was how I had missed the game. That was how I had missed my second chance.
     
     

Chapter Four

 
    “You are never leaving my sight again,” my father screams. He has been screaming for nearly an hour, and I’m surprised he hasn’t lost his voice yet. “I don’t care if I have to handcuff you to the batting cage, you are
not
missing another game
.”
    I nod, but I can’t look at him. I can’t say anything. I know this isn’t entirely my fault, but my excuse of uncontrollable sleeping will only make things worse.
    “Go to your room.”
    I go, gladly.
    When I get to my room, I listen to my parents fighting though the walls as clearly as if they were in the room with me.
    “Don’t you think you’re being too hard on him?” my mother asks.
    “He’s a screw-up,” my father responds. “We’ve spoiled him, Barb. To fix it we can’t be hard enough.”
    “But he’s just a boy.”
    “A boy? And what happens in two years when he’s eighteen, huh? You want him living here the rest of his life? You want that? You know he’s not smart enough to make it on his own.”
    She doesn’t answer.
    “I just worry about what the other boys will do to him at school,” she says after a minute.
    “He deserves what he gets,” my father snaps.
    * * *
    The next week is a waking nightmare. Time blends and events mingle in my zombie-like stupor. I stop smiling, but I manage to make it to school every day. I don’t have much of a choice about that though.
    It becomes a fact around school that I have narcolepsy, and that I have chosen it. It is my fault the team is losing (even though they weren’t winning before I was on it).
    The whole school starts to hate me to the exact degree to which they once loved me.
    I find notes on my desk when I get to class telling me to kill myself.
    I wake up one day at lunch covered in cold chili. Someone has poured a bowl of