Read Online A Star is Born by Walter Dean Myers - Free Book Online Page B

won’t it?”
    â€œAnd when Dad calls and says what are you doing we can say we were making a duck castle, or whatever.”
    â€œCassoulet. Cass-oo-lay! It’s French.”
    â€œIt’s a French duck?”
    â€œIt’s a French recipe.”
    â€œOkay, we’ll do it.”
    Â 
    â€œSo the point of the whole thing is that Mom is worried because my father’s putting her down because we aren’t running around living the high life,” I said to Kambui. “So we’re going to make this fancy French dish just so she can tell him about it.”
    â€œYeah, but that’s, like, a girl thing, right?” Kambui was texting as we walked.
    â€œI think it’s more a fancy thing than a girl thing,” I said. “Anyway, Mom said that most of the top cooks in the world are guys. Maybe I’ll turn out to be some great cook or something. I’ll go along with it for her.”
    â€œThat’s okay, man,” Kambui said. “And if it turns out really good you can cook something for me. But I don’t eat ducks.”
    Â 
    â€œZander, are you free for lunch?” This from Caren Culpepper when I was sitting in the media center.
    â€œWhy?” This from me.
    â€œI need to talk to you about something,” Caren said. “I just need to get some things clear in my head.”
    â€œWhat things?”
    â€œI’ll meet you in the lunchroom in front of the popcorn machine,” she said. “Twelve-thirty.”
    Caren started walking away and I was just telling myself that there was no way I was going to have lunch with her when Phat Tony from the Genius Gangstas came and plopped his overweight butt next to me.
    â€œHey, man, the people are talking that The Cruiser newspaper is lame compared to The Palette . You see the story they got this week?”
    Phat Tony pushed The Palette in front of me. There was a picture of a woman soldier on the front page.
    â€œThey got an interview with her,” Phat Tony said. “She killed two dudes over there and she just volunteered to go back again. Your little jive newspaper ain’t got nothing like that, man. That’s a collector’s edition. All you got in your newspaper is whining and poems and stuff. You got a lame newspaper.”
    I knew, sooner or later, that I was going to have to go to war with Phat Tony. The dude just got on my nerves. I picked up the copy of The Palette he had pushed before me and turned to the article by the soldier. She wrote about how she wanted to defend her country and how her parents were nervous about her being in a combat zone and how she had been caught in an ambush and had to fire her weapon. What she said was she might have killed somebody, and maybe even two people. She said she wasn’t happy with the idea but she had to do what she had to do. It was a strong piece, especially with the photograph.
    I didn’t have anything to say to Phat Tony because he wouldn’t have understood it, anyway. The fool had a high IQ but I knew that didn’t make him smart in any kind of useful way. He had stink breath, too.

    THE CRUISER
    A SPECIAL EDITORIAL
    THE SAME STORY, A DIFFERENT VIEW
    By Sagal Shehabi
    The other day a young woman wrote a guest editorial in The Palette . I saw her in the school hallways. She was tall, for a woman, and blond, and quite beautiful. She spoke of serving in the military, and there was pride in the way she talked about doing her duty and using her weapon when she felt that was necessary. She was serving in a land with which I am familiar, because I was born there.
    There is chaos in my land, my Afghanistan. People die almost every day and in every manner possible. Shiites kill Sunnis, Sunnis kill Kurds, Kurds kill Shiites. The Taliban kill at will. It goes on and on. No one in Kandahar is untouched. For us there are few heroes, and fewer heroines. A bomb is thrown onto a bus, unmindful of whose life it will take. A soldier