Read Online Smiles to Go by Jerry Spinelli - Free Book Online

that mean?”
    I didn’t know what it meant. The storm inside me had passed. Just dry husks of thought left on the ground.
    “Maybe I’m thinking of him. Maybe I want him to win. Maybe I want him to win fair and square, that’s all.”
    Mi-Su just stared. She knew it was all bull-crap.
    BT finally spoke: “All I know is, you meatballs wouldn’t stand a chance if this game had more railroads.”
    Tabby was perched on BT’s shoulders. She pointed down at me, sneered, “Meatball!”
    When I went to bed all I could think was: You jerk. What makes you think she’ll want to kiss you back now?
    PD108
    S trange territory for me: the after-snap. I still feel myself vibrating. Humming. When I think about it, one minute I’m embarrassed, the next minute I’m—what? Excited? Thrilled? I mean, feeling myself lose it like that—I wonder if it was anything like BT’s plunge down Dead Man’s Hill: off the edge of self-control and down the slippery slope of my own words. Scary. Wouldn’t do it again. But kind of OK with having done it that once.
    And surprised that the whole world seems to be OK with it, too. No announcement over the PA this morning: “Calling all classes! Please note that on Saturday night at around nine o’clock Will Tuppence snapped….”
    BT was perfectly normal in school today, like it never happened. He came at me before homeroom: “Yo, Will! Check this out.” And showed me a handful of change he found with his father’s new detector. I had been toying with the idea of saying “Sorry about the other night,” but I could see there was no point. He would have said, “What are you talking about?”
    So he’s letting me off the hook. Fine. But here’s the twisted part: now I’m a little mad at that . Why? Because by ignoring my bad behavior he throws it back in my face. Because he refuses to care about anything . How do you deal with somebody who can’t be insulted?
    So what the heck do I want? I think I want him to forgive me. But that will never happen, because you can’t forgive unless you first give a crap.
     
    I finally got to Mi-Su at lunch. I steered her to an empty table in the corner. (BT usually sits with us, but he left school before lunch. Took a half-day. He does that sometimes.) Somebody called: “Check it out—Tuppence and Kelly.” Mi-Su smiled (dazzling), laughed (smile on wheels), stuck out her tongue at the caller.
    We sat down. I jumped in: “I was a jerk the other night.”
    She pried the plastic lid off her salad. “Just the other night?”
    “Funny girl.”
    She went straight for the radish. She crunched it. “Did you tell him?”
    I picked at the clear wrap on my egg salad sandwich. “Well, actually, I was sort of going to, and then when I saw him this morning he was so, like, Who cares? Like, it’s today now. It’s like he never even noticed.”
    I caught a whiff of radish breath. “He didn’t.”
    I unwrapped my sandwich. “I feel like the villain.”
    “Hissss.”
    “I was thinking about this—”
    “You’re always thinking.”
    “The thing is, that’s not why I get mad at him.”
    She crunched the second radish. “If you say so.”
    “Hey”—I jabbed half a sandwich at her—
    “maybe I care more about him than he cares about himself. Ever think of that? Ever think that when I bust his chops it’s—”
    She finished the sentence: “—for his own good. I know.”
    “So?” I said. “Is that so bad? Is it so bad to want him to amount to something? Look athim. He goes down hills and messes up clocks. What kind of life is that?”
    She sipped her orange juice. Orange juice and radish. Sicko. “What I think is, we have this conversation about once a month.”
    “Sorry,” I said. “So, shoot me for caring.”
    Now she was looking at me funny.
    “What?” I said.
    “It just occurred to me. Out of the blue.”
    “ What? ”
    “You never laugh out loud.”
    “You’re off the subject,” I told her. “And you’re crazy, too. I do so