You Changed My Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

You’re not really going to do that?”
    â€œIt’s mine. It’s my business.”
    Okay. I’ll buy it for ten francs. I’ll bring them tomorrow. Don’t hurt it, okay?
    â€œSounds good.”
    The next day, Vanessa is holding the little round coin in the palm of her hand.
    â€œAbdel, I’ll give it to you but I want to see the hamster first.”
    I open my backpack, she hands me the money.
    â€œOkay, give it to me.”
    â€œOh no, Vanessa! The ten francs is just for the first paw. If you want another, that’ll be ten more!”
    She brings the money to my building that evening.
    â€œGive me the hamster now. That’s enough!”

    â€œHey sweets, my hamster has four paws . . . But I’ll give you the last two for fifteen, you’re getting a deal . . .”
    â€œAbdel, you’re a real bastard! Fine, give me the hamster and I’ll pay you at school on Thursday.”
    â€œVanessa, I’m not sure I can trust you . . .”
    She’s crimson with anger. So am I, from laughing. I hand her the stinky little furball and watch her walk away. I never would have harmed a hair on that hamster. It died a few weeks later in its five-star cage at her house. She didn’t even know how to take good care of it.

    From junior high, I was transferred to a vocational school in the XIIIth district, the general mechanics branch. It’s called Lycée Chennevière-Malézieux. On the first day, the associate principal gives us a history lesson, and at the same time, a nice little life lesson.
    â€œAndré Chennevière and Louis Malézieux were two ardent defenders of France at the time of the German occupation during the Second World War. You are lucky to live in a prosperous and peaceful country. You’ll only need to fight to shape your future. I encourage you to use the same courage as Chennevière and Malézieux in learning your trade.”
    Got it. Like those two dudes, I’m going to join the Resistance. I never had any intention of getting my hands dirty. I’m fourteen, no goals to attain, just my freedom to preserve. Two more years to go and they’ll have to let me go. After sixteen, school is no longer mandatory in France. But I know that even before then, they will cut us loose.
    I have nothing in common with the herd they want me to
graze with. What was that story already that the French teacher told us last year? The sheep of Panurge—that’s it! The guy throws one into the sea, and the rest follow. In this pathetic herd, all the students look like sheep. You have to see it. The empty stare, three vocabulary words at most, one idea per year. They’ve repeated once, twice, sometimes three times. They convinced someone that they were hanging on, eyeing graduation, university, and all the other bullshit. They have basic instincts: to eat and to fuck—there’s no other word for it because it’s the one they say to each other all day.
    Three pitiful girls have ended up here, in this class of degenerates. At least one of them will find herself in the position, more than once, and under more than just one of them . . . I have my faults, but that kind of violence isn’t one of them. Thanks, guys, but no thanks. I play elsewhere, and at other games.

7
    We were restless at Beaugrenelle towers. The stores were start ing to get seriously equipped in anticipation of our visits: motion detectors, more sophisticated antitheft devices, security cameras, personnel trained to be on the lookout for certain kinds of customers . . . In less than two years, the security had increased so much in stores that we could no longer steal from the source. We either had to give up on the hooded sweatshirts that suited us so well or else go get them somewhere else . . . directly from the wearers, the kids from the rich neighborhoods. The reasoning doesn’t lack logic or cynicism, I can admit it now. At the time, I