One Lonely Degree Read Online Free

One Lonely Degree
Book: One Lonely Degree Read Online Free
Author: C. K. Kelly Martin
Pages:
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my circle, but Dad just keeps asking about Audrey, like I’m not a complete freak for having only one true friend.
    “I almost forgot,” I say suddenly. For once I actually have news Mom will want to hear. “There’s this new guy, Jersy, at school. Jersy Mikulski. You used to work with his mother, like, ten years ago.”
    “Anna Mikulski.” Mom’s eyebrows fly up towards the ceiling. “Did you get her phone number? I’d love to give her a call.”
    “I barely spoke to him.” I can see where this is going, but there’s not a thing I can do about it. Mom won’t understand why I don’t want to ask Jersy for his home phone number. “I didn’t even recognize him until he told me.”
    “Well, you can pass on our number tomorrow,” she says, her voice loud with excitement. “I was thinking of her not too long ago, isn’t that funny? You two were just the same age.” Mom beams at me. “You and her son. He was a real handful. Made me feel lucky that you were so quiet and well behaved.”
    “Too bad you don’t feel the same way now.” I say it like I’m joking, but Dad pushes his chair away from the table.
    “Come on, Finn,” he says. “Give your old man a hand with the dishes.” I know this tone. He’s trying to head off an argument between Mom and me, but I’m not in the mood to argue anyway.
    I help Dad with the dishes, walk Samsam, finish my homework, IM Audrey, and then climb into bed. At first I’m afraid that I won’t be able to sleep again, that I’ll repeat last night’s performance, but then I hear my parents’ bedroom door open. My mom’s voice is low and strained. Dad says her name like he’s reading a police report:
“Gloria, enough.”
There’s no feeling behind the words, and I shiver under the covers and keep listening. I listen to the silence for so long that the effort of it makes me want to close my eyes. And that’s the last thing I remember.
    I pass Adam Porter in the hallway nearly every day. His perfect skin and razor-sharp cheekbones make him look like an actor playing a seventeen-year-old. Most of his friends look like actors too—or sports stars. They walk and talk like they’re putting on a drama for the rest of us, and for the most part it works. People watch them. People talk about them. Lots of people want to be them.
    But not me. I don’t even look at Adam Porter, and he doesn’t look at me. When the overcrowded hallways force us close together, he turns his face away from mine like it offends him to look at me. I feel queasy when he does that, but it doesn’t show on my face. I’m tough. I’m solid steel. Nothing he does can affect me.
    I tell myself that every time, but I still break into a sweat. Myunderarms are damp by the time I get to art class. I’m glad that Jasper won’t shut up. I listen to him as I sketch, nodding at all the right moments. This is all right, I think. I can do this. I’m tough. I’m steel. My lines on the page are definite. I know what I’m doing.
    Then somebody rushes by me, bumping my back. I jump, sending my pencil skidding across the page. “Whoa,” Jersy says, casting a glance behind him as he continues hastily on towards his seat. “Sorry.”
    The period is already half over, and Mr. Ferguson shakes his head and grabs the attendance sheet. “Jersy,” he says, calling him back. “Don’t make yourself comfortable yet.”
    Jersy slides irritably out of the seat next to Abel’s, strides back across the room, and leans down over Mr. Ferguson’s desk. Their conversation is a whisper and I practice lipreading while flipping my eraser between my fingers.
    “It’s not too bad,” Jasper says, pointing down at my polluted environmental campaign and breaking my concentration.
    “I know,” I tell him. “It’s just pencil.”
    By the time I’m through with the eraser, you’ll never know it happened. If it was that easy to erase bits of my life, I’d be a different Finn.
    My eraser streaks recklessly back across the
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