Moving Day Read Online Free Page A

thefancy show cat her dad bought her mom as an anniversary surprise.
    I didn’t tell Mrs. Fleener, the lunchroom lady, that I might be moving when she told me to remind my mother that she hadn’t paid for my lunch milk for next month.
    I didn’t tell anyone at all that I might be moving.
    At least until somehow I ended up standing next to Scott Stamphley during dodgeball in PE (which we were only playing because it was raining and so we couldn’t go outside to play baseball).
    And the truth is, by then I was bursting to tell someone. And I figured it would be safe to tell Scott, since no girls in my class will talk to him. Not because of his New York accent. We all got over that after the first few days of meeting him. But because of his snake collection, which he insists on bringing to school every time there is a science fair. So it wasn’t like there was anyone he could tell, anyway.
    “Want to know a secret?” I asked him as we stood in the back where the big red balls couldn’t get us. Mary Kaywas already out—she’d gotten hit by a ball first thing, because of course everyone wanted to strike her out on her birthday and make her cry. Which completely worked. So now she was sitting on the sidelines showing Mr. Phelps the red mark from the ball on her thigh and saying, “B-but it’s m-my b-birthday!” between sobs.
    “Not really,” Scott said, about my secret question.
    But since I know he was just saying that to be a pain, I told him anyway. “I’m probably moving.”
    “Big deal,” Scott said. Which is one of the reasons why no girls like him. Because he is so rude to us. Also because he does things like burp loudly in class when Ms. Myers isn’t paying attention, which Brittany Hauser says is disgusting.
    But I didn’t care that he was being rude to me, because it was just such a relief to tell someone.
    “I probably won’t be going to this school anymore,” I told him.
    “Good,” Scott said. “Then I won’t have to look at your stupid face anymore.”
    Since this is just the way Scott is, I didn’t take offense. Also because I know if you gasp and flounce away when boys act like this, like Brittany Hauser does, you are really just giving them what they want.
    “It’s going to be really hard,” I told him. “I’ll have to make all new friends.”
    “That is going to be really hard for you,” Scott said. “On account of how ugly you are.”
    If Scott had said that to Mary Kay, of course she would have started crying. But I’m used to the way boys talk because of my brothers.
    So I said, “Look at this bruise I got falling off my bike.” And I showed him this huge green-and-blue bruise on my elbow, which doesn’t hurt but is very disgusting-looking.
    And Scott, just like I’d known he would, leaned in real close to look at it, going, “ Sweet …”
    And that’s when I jumped out of the way and, like, thirty balls hit him in the face.
    Yesssssss. Talk about sweet.
    But I guess Scott didn’t think it was so sweet, becauselater, as Carol came into our class holding all the cupcakes, Mary Kay walked up to me, crying, and said, “Thanks a lot for ruining my birthday!”
    I was totally shocked. I couldn’t see how I’d ruined Mary Kay’s birthday, since I hadn’t been doing anything but coloring in a picture of a lion, which I’d planned on presenting her for her birthday.
    “What do you mean?” I asked her.
    “Why don’t you just ask Scott?” she said, and flounced away.
    I looked over at Scott and saw that he was making a giant card for Mary Kay, which said, Too bad Allie’s moving, now you’ll have no friends at all. Happy Birthday!
    And a second later, Brittany Hauser and her best friend, Courtney Wilcox, came up to me and were, like, “You’re moving? How come you didn’t tell us?” right as Carol and Ms. Myers starting singing “Happy Birthday.”
    But the birthday girl had already put her head down on her desk and was crying.
    So I guess it wasn’t a very