Fast-Tracked Read Online Free Page B

letter, can you call up Aunt Irena every day and show it to her?” My mom responded by shaking her head and audibly laughing as the tears streamed down her face. I was momentarily grateful for my aunt. She had given my mom a well needed break from her worry. Too bad she hadn’t done a thing for mine.
    I went back upstairs, grabbed my tablet. As much as I wanted to call Byron back, I resisted. His parents already gave him a hard time about how much we talked. On a day like today it might be enough to push his stressed-out dad over the edge. So instead, I searched through the day’s broadcasts. I found a news report following the reaction of celebrities and their children as they received their assessment letters last year. I watched as kid after kid opened their letters and squealed in delight. The reporter interviewed each one afterward and they all said they had gotten the color they expected.
    I was getting bored and was about to change the channel when the reporter announced that they were at the home of Krystal Skye and her son Damie . Krystal was a washed-up actress that hadn’t been in an actual movie for over ten years now. The only thing that kept her in the spotlight was the constant scandals she kept getting herself into. Most recently she had produced pictures of herself entwined with a Senator from California. He had been outraged and demanded a national apology from her for presenting such hurtful, altered photographs.
    It wasn’t the rumor of an affair that had him so outraged. He had been caught many times before. What outraged him was the implication that he would be with someone who had let herself go like Krystal had.
    After having her son, for some reason Krystal stopped caring about what anyone else thought – and not in a good way. Today’s broadcast showed her walking in front of her house with hot pink curlers halfway fallen out. Her fried blonde hair was topped by four inches of black roots. She wore a dingy grayish t-shirt that might have once been white. Food stains peppered the front of the shirt that had the saying, ‘I’m in shape. Round is a shape.’ Without caring that the camera was there she loudly burped and picked her crotch.
    While I thought the Senator was a slime ball who should be embarrassed for all his affairs, I could see how Krystal’s claim caused an extra amount of embarrassment.
    “So, Krystal, do you care to make a guess as to what color letter Damie will receive today?” the reporter asked with a mischievous glint in her eye.
    Krystal gave the performance the reporter must have hoped for. “That’s easy. My Damie will get silver or maybe even gold. He’s a genius, that one. Taught himself to read, even before he started school. By his first year of school he could tell you every president this country had ever had and the years of their presidencies.” She proudly thrust her chest out, but then stumbled from her sudden shift in weight.
    The carriers arrived and knocked on the door of Krystal’s home. A well-rounded boy stuck his head out the door and allowed the carrier to scan his iris. The carrier handed him his letter and the boy quickly disappeared back behind the door. For several minutes there was nothing but Krystal’s nervous pacing. Finally, when she couldn’t stand it any longer, she walked into the house to see. A moment later came an animal’s thunderous growl of rage. Krystal stormed out the front door waving a brown letter in her hand.
    “You think you can do this to my son and get away with it, you filthy low-down piece of political scum –” The rest of what she said must have been filled with vulgarities, because it was all bleeped out.
    The reporter’s voice returned, but now she spoke soberly as she explained how tragic it was when a promising student managed to fall so sort of his or her expectations. Then the camera cut to recent footage of Damie almost a year after receiving his assessment letter. He was returning home from a day of