What I Wore to Save the World Read Online Free PDF Page A

from looking at the pictures in the brochure Mr. Phineas had given me. You can fake your way through a lot of home-work by skimming captions, I’d always found. Though maybe my over-reliance on that particular study technique helped explain the sorry state of my grades.
    I tried to remember what else it said in the captions. “I mean, show some enthusiasm, people! We’re talking about Oxford. Home of Rhodes Scholars. The place is, like, practically a thousand years old or something.”
    Now, my mom was a woman who could spot the label on a Prada bag or a Pucci blouse from a mile away. You’d think she’d be doing a major happy dance that her firstborn child was aiming for a university of global reputation. You’d think she would already be planning how to deploy the Ox ford bragging rights to maximum effect among her peers.
    You’d think. But no. She stared at my dad with her hands on her hips and her lips pressed flat into a long straight line—the universal marital signal for say something, you doofus, I’m all alone out here.
    â€œYou don’t want me to go so far away?” I asked, lost. “Is that it?”
    At last, a reaction from Dad. He burst out laughing.
    â€œEngland isn’t that far, compared to some places,” he said, once he regained control of himself. “Anyway, your mother and I are the ones who sent you to Ireland last summer, remember?”
    â€œSo what is it, then?” I was running out of patience. “You’re worried it’ll be too expensive? You’re afraid I’ll come back with a funny accent? What?”
    Dad shook his head. Mom just hmmm ed and mmmm ed.
    â€œThey don’t think you’re smart enough to get in,” Tammy said cheerfully. “Can I have more bread?”
    But then even Tammy shut up, so we could all inhale the pungent stink bomb of truth the kid had lobbed into the living area.
    Major. Awkward. Silence.
    Mom was the first to crack. “Morgan. Honey. The thing is, your grades have not been stellar.”
    â€œGrades aren’t everything,” I protested weakly. “There’s the application essay, like Mr. Phineas said. And, you know. Extracurricular activities and stuff.”
    â€œName one,” Dad shot back.
    Whoosh. Two points for Dad.
    â€œIf only she’d run for some kind of office,” my mom said to him, like I wasn’t even there. “Treasurer. Secretary, even.”
    â€œWhy not class president?” I snapped, pushing away my lasagna. “Or don’t you think I could do that, either?”
    â€œIt’s not that we think you couldn’t,” Dad said, as he wiped the tomato sauce off his mouth and defiantly clicked on the TV. “It’s that you didn’t.”
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    fek. i hated it when my parents were right.
    Morgan Rawlinson, senior class president. That would have sounded so much better on my Oxford application than Morgan Whatshername, third junior from the left. “One of the more nondescript students in her class.” How’s that for a yearbook caption? But it was true. Hardly anyone at East Norwich High School even knew who I was before I hacked off all my hair in a fit of heartbreak when Raph ditched me. Then I went from being “Raph’s girlfriend” to “crazy buzz-cut girl.”
    Even then, a lot of kids assumed I was going through chemo. Come graduation, I fully expected a significant percentage of my classmates to sign my yearbook, Congrats on finally beating leukemia!
    But it’s not like I didn’t do any extracurricular activities. It’s just that none of it was stuff I could put on my college application without sounding like a nutcase. I started to make a list:
    â€¢ Can talk to horses and swim with mermaids.
    â€¢ Has a very special relationship with her dad’s garden gnome collection.
    â€¢ Magically finds prom dates for lonely leprechauns.
    Clearly, writing