On the Road to Find Out Read Online Free Page B

it.
    â€œAnd,” I continued, “Walter would not have been rejected from the one school he wanted to go to. He’s never failed at anything in his life. And he loves me even though I’m a loser.”
    â€œAlice, knock it off already. You are so far from being a loser that if all the losers in the world had a gigantic party, you wouldn’t even make it to the C-list. Until two weeks ago, you had never failed at anything in your life. Come on, I think we should do this. Let’s each think of something.”
    â€œYou don’t think Walter is worthy of emulation?” I can get defensive on Walter’s behalf, since there has been such a long history of bigoted persecution against his species.
    â€œNo, Alice, I am not saying anything bad about Walter. You know I like Walter, and I know you love him and, yes, I agree, he is a model citizen in many ways. You’re right: everyone should try to be more like Walter.”
    She offered him a Mini Oreo, which is okay for rats to eat since:
    Â Â 1.  Chocolate is not toxic for rats the way it is for dogs.
    Â Â 2.  I’m not sure there’s any chocolate in an Oreo.
    Â Â 3.  I don’t allow anything in my room that might be dangerous for rats.
    Walter held it with his hands at nine and three, like a perfect driver’s-ed student, and began munching away in careful bites.
    â€œWhat I’m saying, though,” Jenni continued, “is I think we need to find a way to get you to move on.”
    â€œOkay, how about if I resolve to get rejected from more colleges? Oops. Never mind. That’s going to happen anyway.”
    Right after I got the bad news from Yale, I knew I had to submit applications to other schools. The guidance counselor, who never remembered my name, was no help.
    She’d told me I had zero chance of getting into Yale in the first place and that I was crazy to even try. No one from our school had ever gone there, she said, and she advised me to apply to the honors college at the U. My English teacher, Ms. Chan, and Mr. Bergmann, my biology teacher, who really liked my paper on the plagued prairie dogs, had encouraged me and volunteered to write letters of recommendation. They both said that I was the best student they’d had in all their years of teaching.
    For the first week after Rejection Day I did nothing.
    Then I cut-and-pasted my personal statement into the Common Application form and sent it to a bunch of other colleges.
    I spent very little time on the supplemental essays. Instead of writing draft after draft the way I did for the short-answer questions on my Yale application, I just typed them in and sent them off.
    Walter had crawled up to perch on my shoulder and take a nap. As Jenni popped a handful of Mini Oreos into her mouth I said, “Maybe I could get a job as a spokesperson for the Rejected throughout the world. I could give speeches on the different ways to cry after you’ve been rejected. I could do a YouTube video showing the silent tears, the sniffling, breathy hiccuping gasps, the all-out sobs. I could be the poster child for rejection. I could teach other kids how to wallow.”
    Jenni nodded and said, “Yeah, you’ve become a real expert on wallowing. I think you need to find something else to focus on. Before your best friend and your rat get sick of listening to you whine. A hobby. A project!”
    She clapped her hands. Jenni is the queen of projects.
    â€œYou sound too much like Mom for me to want to talk to you,” I said, and got up.
    All year long Mom had been telling me to relax, not stress out so much, take it easy, and I was like, “Oh really? You want me to sit around and smoke pot all day and drink Red Bull and grain alcohol all night like the kids in my school who will end up spending their post-graduation days inquiring, ‘Do you want cheese on that?’”
    Relax? Has she never met me? I have never been a