My Diary from the Edge of the World Read Online Free

My Diary from the Edge of the World
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much a girl version of his—though he’s usually all stubbly.
    â€œJust . . . daydreaming,” he said, turning red and folding up the map abruptly. He adjusted his black glasses on his nose and smiled at me in the fake way adults do sometimes when they’re hiding something from you.Then he glanced up at the clock above the sink. “Hey, shouldn’t you be in bed?”
    So here I am back in my room. But now I can’t sleep.
    I can’t stop thinking about the father dragon and his baby. I hope they’re somewhere safe and warm, even if they did smell bad and even if they eat disgusting things. I guess I can admit this here: I can’t help thinking that if I were flying over a valley and my wings were drooping and giving out, my dad wouldn’t even notice, much less be able to save me.
    *  *  *
    One more thing about the Extraordinary World. Something that is real about it is that many of the ships that went in search of it in the old days never came back—not because they found what they were looking for, but because of the Great Kraken. And now the southern ocean is scattered with phantom ships sailed by ghosts. They can’t be caught on film (no ghost can), but they are widely known to be real. That’s one of many reasons no one goes sailing around the Southern Sea exploring anymore.
    And with that cheerful thought, I’m going to bed.

September 10th
    Boring.

September 11th
    I’m so bored.

September 12th
    I may be the only twelve-year-old on earth who’s managed to break her arm and get grounded in the same week.
    Tonight I’m a prisoner in my own room. I’ve renamed myself Andromeda and am trying to pretend that I’ve been trapped in a tower by a greedy centaur who wants to marry me, but my imagination doesn’t always work as well as it used to.
    Anyway, I may as well just write the embarrassing truth here: I hit a girl in my class on the head with a stick.
    I’m sitting in my windowsill as I write this. Sam the Mouse is feeling better today, and he and his friend from down the street are roughhousing in a pile of leaves out front. This may be the last year I’ll even jump in a pileof leaves—Millie says I won’t want to do things like that much longer. Even though she usually doesn’t know what she’s talking about, I worry that she might be right, because last year I raked up a pile of leaves and didn’t even have the patience to lie under it for more than a few seconds. I used to be able to do that for hours, looking up through the cracks in the leaves, but certain things don’t excite me the way they used to.
    The Dark Cloud has come closer in the last few days, and it does seem that it’s headed for our neighborhood, since we’re the only collection of houses on top of this hill. I’ve added up all the old people on our block and there are four—five if you count Michael Kowalski’s grandma, who’s sixty-eight, which is sort of in the middle between old and not so old. I hope it’s not her, even though she’s always yelling at me not to ride my bike so fast.
    My mom says we’re having ravioli for dinner and that I have to eat it in my room, even though I told her I’ll barf if I eat it. I reminded her of the last time she made me eat ravioli three years ago, when I did throw it up . . . all over a pile of Barbies beside my bed.
    â€œThat was self-motivated vomiting,” she said, closing her lips in a thin determined line and running a handthrough her long dark hair, which is the exact brown (almost-black) color of Millie’s, only straighter.
    My mom is the opposite of my dad—she’s admired everywhere she goes. Millie says it’s something about the way she “holds herself.” I think it’s that she looks like a painting and is always thinking of other people (she’s fascinated by our neighbor Mrs.
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