Oddballs Read Online Free Page B

taking notes in school—no one else could have written fast enough to get it all down legibly.
    Mom found the list of parental outrages the next day when she went up to my room to make my bed. She was not in the best mood, since she and Vicky had just had a screaming fight, and Vicky was sulking in her room. Mom caught sight of Vera’s notes on my bedside table, two wailing toddlers pulling and clawing relentlessly at her as she struggled to plump my pillows and straighten my sheets.
    I was lying on the couch downstairs, reading a wonderful book of horror stories Mom had recently given me, enjoying the rich aroma of the turkey soup, which had already been simmering on the stove when I got up that morning. I was so engrossed in Love-craft’s “The Dunwich Horror” that I didn’t even notice Mom’s approach, despite the pervasive stench of Tycho’s loaded diaper, which inevitably accompanied her. Only when Mom said, “Is this Vera’s handwriting?” did I look up.
    She was standing above me, holding Tycho against her hip with one arm and Vera’s notes in her other hand. My first response, when I realized an already irate Mom had read the list, was chillier than anything evoked by the Lovecraft story.
    â€œVera’s handwriting?” I said stupidly. “Oh, um … I guess … I mean …”
    But Mom chuckled. “This has got to be one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in my life. Listen to this.” And she read, “‘In the privacy of their home, the parents drop their fake public behavior and reveal their true natures: disgusting slobs who laze around the house, reprimanding their kids the instant they are not industrious, engaged in constructive behavior, or impeccably groomed.’”
    â€œNick said that, not me or Vicky,” I quickly pointed out.
    â€œOf course you dumbbells didn’t,” Mom said. “The Greenberg kids are clever enough to come up with something that has a real comic punch to it.”
    I had finally realized she wasn’t angry; now I was insulted. “But we were the ones who said parents are always telling their own kids how inferior they are to other people’s children.”
    â€œI know you have a talent for inventing things, Billy. But that remark just isn’t as witty as Nick’s. Sorry.”
    I didn’t know what to say.
    â€œTake Tycho and clean him up,” she told me. “I want to look this over again.”
    â€œYou’ve already read the whole thing?”
    â€œUh-huh.” She thrust Tycho at me. He started screaming the instant I lifted him, very carefully, from Mom’s hip. She sank down on the couch with Vera’s notes as I bore him away.
    I didn’t really worry that the Greenberg kids might get in trouble as a result of Mom’s finding the list. Mom was not the kind of unscrupulous person who would cause problems by reporting anything from the notes directly to the Greenberg parents. Her discovery of the list had quite different repercussions.
    I don’t remember whose idea it was to turn the notes into a play about the horrors inflicted by adults—especially parents—onto children. What I do know is that Mom was the driving force behind the entire production. She worked harder on it than anybody else, even though she had a full-time job and Danny and Tycho to deal with.
    The first meeting took place the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The industrious, well-groomed, and witty Greenberg kids were there, of course. We also invited Albert, who was Vera’s age, and Vicky’s friends Avis and Eleanor, and my friends Nicole and Bart and Matilda.
    The initial brainstorming session did not begin well. Some of the kids were understandably constrained by Mom’s presence—she was a member of the enemy camp, after all—and did not dare to express themselves freely. Mom attacked this problem by reading the list aloud herself,