Friends of a Feather Read Online Free

lifts my chin. “It’s normal, whatever you’re feeling.”
    â€œWhat
am
I feeling?” I ask, because that’s part of the problem. I honestly don’t know, not for certain.
    â€œLots of things, probably,” Winnie says. Her brown eyes lock with mine, and there is not a speck of meanness in them. Not a speck of
you’re wrong
or
I’m disappointed in you
or
it’s your own fault for not expecting the unexpected
.
    â€œBut there’s more to my story,” she says. “Maxine came back with a cast, like I said, and she got all kinds of crazy attention.”
    "Like a rock star?"
    "Yeah, so guess what I did?"
    â€œMaxine was the girl who broke her arm?”
    â€œUh-huh. I went outside after I got home from school and climbed the climbing tree, the one in the backyard.” She makes a funny expression. “I went all the way out on the branch, as far as I could, and I dangled and dangled, trying to work up the courage to fall. Except Mom saw what I was doing and said, ‘If you break your arm on purpose, I am
not
taking you to the emergency room.’”
    â€œBut she would have if you really did,” I say.
    â€œEh,” Winnie says. “Probably.”
    I tilt my orange juice glass, but not enough to spill any. With Winnie and Maxine . . . I
think
I get it. Winnie thought if she traded places with Maxine, or if her arm traded places with Maxine’s arm, then everyone would have crowded around her instead of Maxine.
    But with me and Joseph, it’s different.
    Winnie wanted the “everyone” part. I just want Joseph. I’m not sure how I feel about the “everyone else” part.
    Winnie stabs a bite of my eggs with her fork and puts it in her mouth. “But after a few days, things went back to normal. Okay?”
    I nod. I’m still confused, but I definitely like the idea of things going back to normal.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    As soon as I get to school, I can see that it hasn’t happened yet. Things
haven’t
gone back to normal.
    Part of it might be Joseph’s red hat. Red is a hard color to look away from, for one thing, and the second thing is that nobody else is wearing a hat. Nobody at all. So his hat is like a cast, sort of, and everyone swarms all over him again.
    Finally Mrs. Webber gets tired of it. She turns around from the whiteboard and puts down the marker.
    â€œYou kids are driving me crazy!” she says about all the whispering and fidgeting and fake pencil sharpening going on. Kids want an excuse to pass Joseph’s desk. That’s why they keep sharpening their pencils.
    Joseph looks worried. So does Elizabeth, who is squatting beside him. She got out of her seat a few minutes ago in order to tell Silas to go back to
his
seat, but she stayed on after Silas left.
    â€œThese rascals can’t leave you alone for a moment, can they?” Mrs. Webber says to Joseph. Elizabeth tries to sneakily duckwalk back to her desk, but ducks are probably the least sneaky animals in the world other than hippopotamuses.
    â€œElizabeth, I can see you, you know,” Mrs. Webber says, and Elizabeth topples over. Her legs splay in front of her and her hair falls out of her barrette. Everyone laughs but me.
    â€œJoseph, would you like to come up front and let everyone ask all the questions they’re so desperate to ask?” Mrs. Webber says. “And then maybe, just maybe, we can focus on fractions?”
    Everyone says please and makes begging hands, and Joseph rises from his desk and walks to the front of the room. That’s where we stand when we do recitations, except Joseph hasn’t done a recitation for ages.
    â€œAll right. If you’d like to ask Joseph a question, raise your hand,” Mrs. Webber says.
    Lexie’s hand shoots into the air. She doesn’t say “ooo ooo, pick me, pick me,” because she knows Mrs. Webber doesn’t like that, but