My Diary from the Edge of the World Read Online Free Page B

just wanted to keep it for myself and maybe use it as a curtain rod in my room. Even now I can’t imagine why I wanted to keep it so badly. I guess it was because I knew everyone else wanted me to hand it over. And then when Arin stepped forward to grab it from me, it was as if I were possessed, because the stick rose so quickly and hit her across the head before I even thought about it. And then she was grabbing her ear, and Mrs. Corsiglia was standing in front of me, yelling at me so loudly I couldn’t even make out the words.
    I know I’m too old to hit people with sticks. Once I stop being annoyed, I’m 80 percent sure I’ll feel truly sorry.
    Anyway, now I’m grounded. It would be a lot more interesting being stuck in here if my imagination worked halfway as well as it used to.
    *  *  *
    Oh, something else interesting happened, between math and Flying Reptiles. Today we got Oliver. He’s skinny and has a fish face and his whole body seems to want to disappear, as if he thinks that if he hunches his shoulders down far enough no one will see him. He’s got bright green eyes and hair that looks like it’s never met a hairbrush and a long scar down one side of his cheek.
    We have such a small school that we only get a new student every couple of years. The last one was from Sweden and named Inez; she barely spoke English and smelled like bananas. This boy is no improvement. He’s quiet and bizarre. I think if I were as quiet as him, I’d disappear.
    At lunch he sat at the far empty end of the teachers’ table by himself with a bag of Skittles, not eating them like a normal person but instead slipping them under the table. It took a scouting mission by Matthew Howard to figure out that he was slipping them one by one to some kind of creature he keeps in his pocket, but wedon’t know what. Arin thinks it’s a frog, as if frogs eat Skittles.
    Oliver looks like he’s mentally very far away, and he has a habit of touching the scar on his cheek as if he keeps reminding himself it’s there. I heard Arin Roland whisper to someone that he’s from Connecticut and his family was killed by sasquatches, and now he’s an orphan living with a foster family in town, so I guess maybe the scar is from the sasquatch attack.
    The thing is, personal tragedy is the kind of thing that can get you a lot of attention at my school. If he’d tell people his story, they’d be flocking around him. But Oliver just sat through lunch quietly, barely looking at his surroundings. Everyone stared at him all through lunch, and some people looked at me to see what we should do. I just ignored him.
    Walking to the front office to be sent home later, I noticed him sitting by the fountain, whispering to the thing in his pocket, and I decided he was even stranger than I thought.
    PS: A note on sasquatches, from history class: The sasquatches were instrumental in helping the north win the American civil war. Sasquatches are generally brutal creatures with little or no conscience, but theyabhor the enslavement of anyone, even their enemies (humans!). So in the 1860s hordes of them emerged from the deep woods of the Smokies to fight on the Union side. Thanks to them, the war was over three months after it started.

September 16th
    I write this from under the covers with a flashlight. I’m too worried to sleep.
    Sam has one of his endless colds, and I can hear him coughing in his room down the hall. He went to the doctor again today and they’re doing some tests and I can tell that my parents are tense about it. Everyone has been quiet tonight. Dad is in one of his “swamps.”
    â€œPlease stay out of trouble and don’t worry your father,” Mom keeps saying. But I don’t think it’s fair that Dad gets to hide in his swamp while the rest of us have to go on acting like normal people all the time.
    The Dark Cloud was on our block tonight when we