Read Online The Tragedy of Loving Jamie Clarke by Rebecca R. Cohen - Free Book Online Page A

will lessen with time so I might as well make use of it now while I can.
    Mom’s shoulders roll and her face drops. Yes! It’s worked.
    “I made you lunch so you don’t have to eat those stale pizzas today,” she says handing me a brown paper bag.
    “Thanks mom. Bye!” I am out of the house before she can give me a daily pep-talk. For the last month mom has been leaving me little reminders that this brace isn’t going to be around forever and that I shouldn’t let it affect me in a negative way. She reminds me of how beautiful I am and that people will see past the bars and the plastic and remember that I am still the same person I’ve always been but of course, since Jamie and I got together mom’s notes have referenced him quite a bit. Yesterday she said, “ For everything we don’t think we can handle we get something so incredible we can do anything. You got this crappy deal with the brace but if you hadn’t then maybe you wouldn’t have met Jamie. Maybe all of your brace stuff came along so you could find something awesome. Life is beautiful April, as are you.” If anyone saw these notes they would think I was suicidal.
     
    Ding-Dong! “Damn, I am late, that’s first period bell.”
    Today is the day my luck runs out. Mrs. Honor is going to make a big thing of my tardiness like she did when Mikela Asher was late last week. She had poor Mikela stand in front of the class and read an entire chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird . I couldn’t imagine having to be in the front of the class and reading. When I read aloud I tend to read the wrong line or say a word wrong so Scout Finch would come out as Fout Sinch as if people wouldn’t be laughing enough as is because of my brace, let’s add in stupidity to the many things they can make fun of me for.
    As I’m tearing through the hallway, I see the two freshmen boys who have been teasing me about my brace. They are nasty, immature boys but they are not violent. They are giggling like tween girls who are meeting Justin Bieber. One of them is holding a shiny object in his hand. And they are racing right towards me. “Hey move over before you plow into me you jerks!” I shout. As they get closer I see what the shiny object is; a master combination lock, and it’s open. The boy holding the lock raises it slightly and lunges towards me. “Here Hunch!” As Henry Mason ducks into Mrs. Honor’s class I can hear the lock clank onto the metal bar on the left side of my neck. Laughing, the boys bolt down the hallway and out of sight. The lock hums and scratches against the bar. The thing I feared the most has happened. I am officially the school joke. My only solace is that everyone else is in class so no one else can see this combination lock hanging off my brace. I frantically try to remove the lock and swing my shoulder around, which forces the lock to slide toward the front of the bar so I can grab it. “Oh my God! How can I get this thing off me?” I yell. Okay, only two ways that I know of to remove a combination lock.
Use the combination on the sticker on the back of the lock.
Cut it off with bolt cutters.
    “Oh please God the lock combination has to be on the back! “I say and turn the lock over hoping the combination is still there. Nope.
    When I was 13-years-old and, as my mother put it, reached womanhood for the first time, I had this crush on Andrew Slater. One day when we were waiting for our parents to pick us up I was wearing a skirt and I didn’t feel the trickling sensation down my leg. But my crush noticed and pointed at me and ran away screaming like I had some deadly disease. I was so embarrassed I played sick the rest of the school week. This might be worse than that because this is happening in high school .
    The hallway is rotating around me and my legs buckle until I’m forced to the ground. “Please someone tell me this isn’t happening” I moan. I tug at the lock until my fingers are white. This is useless I am never going to get