Always, Abigail (11 page)

1.
I have to spend the entire language arts period with my desk pushed up next to Gabby's?

2.
Isn't my life miserable enough already?

3.
I'm going to kill Gabby for writing that note to Old Hawk.

Who cares who my partner is?! This whole period is going to be a BLOW OFF!!!!

T-A-L-K-E-D for the
whole
forty minutes.

1.
How lame the friendly letter assignment is.

2.
How genius the Old Hawk mailbox is.

3.
What was on TV last night.

4.
How the tuna casserole in the cafeteria must be part cat food to taste as bad as it does.

5.
What movies were showing this weekend.

6.
What movies just came out for rental.

7.
How great it is to get to talk with partners for the whole class period. (The only thing better is watching a movie.)

“Don't Abigail and Gabby look cute together?”

Is there anyone more annoying than Jackson Dawber?

“They're perfect for each other.”

What does
that
mean?

“You trying out for basketball this year?”

1.
“No way. Last year I went to conditioning for two weeks, and all the guys were all buddy-buddy the whole time, but then I got cut, and no one on the team even talked to me anymore.”

2.
“Forget that, man. I got better things to do.”

1.
Was poms like basketball?

2.
What better things did Jackson have to do—think of new ways to make an idiot of himself?

3.
Would I have to find better things to do too?

With Your Partner:

1.
Spend ten minutes telling each other three things you've enjoyed about writing friendly letters.

2.
Spend fifteen minutes practicing next week's spelling words.

3.
Spend fifteen minutes writing next week's vocabulary sentences.

1.
“That Old Hawk mailbox is working out all right, isn't it?”

I stared at my spiral notebook.

2.
“Beats listening to Old Hawk's cute little first-grade spelling tricks for each spelling word, or her ten-minute-long
supposedly humorous
explanations of each vocabulary word.”

I shrugged my shoulders.

3.
“So you must be pretty bummed about poms, huh?”

I clenched my teeth and stared at Gabby. I wished I could fold up her freakishness, stuff it into an envelope, and mail it to the South Pole. (That was the farthest place I could think of.)

4.
“It's not the end of the world, you know.”

That's when all the anger, frustration, and disappointment of my shattered pom-pom girl dreams turned into hot lava. It erupted from me like I was an active volcano.

When Gabby said, “It's not the end of the world, you know,” I lunged at her like it was Friday night at the fights. I knocked her off her chair and somehow ended up on top of her. Old Hawk swooped down on us before I even realized what I'd done. She pulled me off Gabby like she'd worked in a prison her whole life and breaking up fights was something she did every day.

“What is the meaning of this completely inappropriate outburst, Abigail!”

Gabby jumped up right away and said, “Oh, nothing, Miss Hendrick. Abigail was just showing me this trick she learned in her self-defense class. I'm okay. I asked her to show it to me.”

I was in shock. I didn't know what to say. The rest of the class stared at us like we were aliens. Old Hawk looked at us like she didn't believe Gabby. We sat down, and Old Hawk went back to her desk.

1.
I said, “Thanks,” but wondered why Gabby had covered for me.

2.
Gabby and I opened our notebooks and, without saying a word, wrote our vocabulary sentences.

3.
When Gabby finished her work, she grabbed a grimy paperback sticking out of the pocket of her backpack and cracked it open. It was a copy of
Stone Fox
.

Mr. Kirby had read it to us last year, so I didn't know why Gabby was reading it again. I noticed there were little stick figure drawings and writing in the margins on almost every page.

4.
Five minutes before the bell rang, with her head still buried in her book, Gabby started her usual laughing for no reason.
Stone Fox
wasn't a funny story, so what was she laughing about? She covered her mouth and chuckled to herself for at least a full minute.

5.
I let out an exasperated sigh and wondered how someone could act so normal one minute and so bizarre the next. No wonder Gabby Marco had no friends. It was her own dumb fault.

Pulled out a stack of yellow business cards from her back pocket and stuck one in the palm of my hand.

When life hands you lemons, don't pucker and pout, make lemonade and laugh out loud.

Margaret Marco

1.
What in the world did it mean?

2.
Why in the world did Gabby give it to me?

3.
Who in the world was Margaret Marco?

4.
Was this why Gabby decorated her shoebox-mailbox like a carton of lemonade?