Cannie Shapiro 02 Certain Girls Read Online Free Page B

they'll try to explain, but it's like when I was little again: Even though I can hear the words, they don't come together in a way that makes sense.
    "My turn," said Tamsin. She sat up and piled her hair into a knot on top of her head. "Um..."
    I turned away. If Tamsin could find even one thing she didn't like about her mother, I would be shocked. Mrs. Marmer has a normal-size chest--or at least she did before the implants. Tamsin and Todd's father is her husband, not an old boyfriend who got Mrs. Marmer pregnant and never even married her.
    But the best thing about Mrs. Marmer is that she leaves her kids alone. Last month she was twenty minutes late to the all-school holiday musical. Tamsin, who was sitting next to me and checking the time on her cell phone every thirty seconds, glared as her mom came tiptoeing in right in the middle of Todd's first solo, one hand pressed to her mouth, flimsy rubber flip-flops slapping against the auditorium floor. Traffic, she mouthed, easing herself into the seat next to Tamsin. "I'm so sorry, baby, did I miss much?" My mom was sitting on my other side, and I saw her lips tighten as she took in Mrs. Marmer's flip-flops and bright coral toenails. My mom's face relaxed when she saw me looking, and she shrugged. "Things happen," she whispered while Tamsin flipped her cell phone shut, pressing her lips together.
    I thought that I'd never been so jealous of my friends. My mother would never, ever forget me. Not even for twenty minutes. Probably not even for twenty seconds. I am the main topic of interest in her life. She drops me off at school every morning (every other kid in my class walks or takes the bus), and every afternoon, as soon as the last bell rings, her minivan (chosen because Consumers Digest rated it the safest car on the market) is first in line to pick me up. When I have swim practice or show choir rehearsal, she waits for me, sitting in the bleachers or the auditorium, knitting or tapping away on her laptop. She's the president of the home/school association, and my room mother, and she's always the first one to volunteer to bring the cut-up fruit and sports drink to the meets, or host the cast parties after the shows, or push a book into my hand, something about Terabithia or Narnia, something by Philip Pullman or Roald Dahl. Ooh, Joy, you're going to love this one; it was my favorite when I was your age!
    She's with me almost every minute of the day when I'm not in class, watching me like she's waiting for me to throw my sippie cup across the floor and start kicking the carpet, to need her again, the way I did when I was three. And when she's not with me, she's thinking about me, planning some kind of mother-daughter activity or knitting me something I don't need (another scarf, another sweater, another pair of mittens), buying me yet another book that I'll just leave on my bookshelf or installing special safety locks on my bedroom window because once, before I was born, some rock star's kid fell out of a window (I looked it up online and found out that the window was on the fifty-third floor of a high-rise in New York City, and the kid was four, but even after I'd explained all of that to my mother, she still had the safety locks installed).
    "Our mom makes terrible school lunches," Tamsin finally managed.
    "The worst," Todd said, nodding. I tried to sound sympathetic, but I was thinking that I'd trade a soggy cream-cheese-and-olive sandwich or a leftover low-carb burrito any day of the week if I'd get Mrs. Marmer instead of a mother who never left me alone. She doesn't hold my chin anymore, but sometimes I think I can still feel her fingers on my face. As soon as I get into the car after school, it starts: How was your day? How was school? Can I get you a snack? Want to help me make dinner? Can I pick you up anything at the supermarket? Do you need any help with your homework? until I just want to scream, Leave me alone, leave me alone, I can't breathe with you this close