Pack of Dorks Read Online Free

I thought would’ve been a lot smaller now that the baby was on the outside. (But Dad said that takes time and not to mention it to Mom that I noticed.) She sat on the couch with a blanket wrapped around her and Molly in a bassinet beside her. Every time Molly made a noise, Mom pulled her close and whispered to her or fed her until she stopped whimpering. Then Dad would change her diaper. Then Mom would cry again.
    There is something very, very wrong about seeing a mom cry. They aren’t supposed to do that.
    Plus, the whole thing was very boring. I knew babies stay like big lumps for a few days. But I thought I’d at least get to play a little bit with her. Yet every time I came anywhere close to Molly with a rattle or a stuffed animal, Mom would tell me to back off. “She’s resting,” or “Molly is content right now.” Dad was looking up stuff on the Internet. Every time I went into his office, he closed the laptop and said he needed time “to research.”
    I couldn’t watch TV because Mom and Molly needed to rest. I had left my library book at school and had nothing to read. The phone was disconnected after it rang nonstop for the first few hours we got back from the hospital. I was bored with a capital B.
    A billboard-sized B.
    Finally I just sat in the chair across from the couch and stared at Mom and Molly. After a few minutes of this, Mom seemed to realize that one of her daughters was, in fact, not resting or content. She cleared her throat, pulled her frizzy hair back into an ugly ponytail, and said, “So. Someone kissed you.”
    Somehow I totally forgot about telling her that. I forgot about The Kiss entirely! Friday seemed like a really long time ago. I quickly pulled down my sleeve to cover my left hand, not feeling up to showing that while one kid was just being born, the other had been both kissed and given a diamond. Only my ring wasn’t on my finger. In fact, the only thing on my finger was a thin green band of skin where the ring had been.
    The ring was gone.
    My life was over.

Chapter Three

    Dad wouldn’t take me back to the hospital for my ring. “No way in the world am I heading back there. Not for anything, especially a plastic ring from a fourth-grade boy.”
    My face burned. “It’s. A. Diamond!”
    “Diamond rings don’t make girls’ fingers turn green.”
    I stomped my foot and growled. Dad laughed, which made me growl even louder. “Are you farting lollipops again?”
    Oh, now I was really mad. Once when I was three years old and in the middle of a huge tantrum, Mom asked me if I was farting lollipops. I was so stunned by the question I had stopped mid-scream. She said the only excuse a person had for an all-out screaming fit was either having a leg fall off or farting a lollipop. Now, whenever she and Dad think I’m acting ridiculous, they ask me if one of those things is happening.
    “Please!” I cried. “Please! It’s really important to me!” Like that time “Puff, the Magic Dragon” got stuck in my head for three days, Becky’s whisper-shout about the ring making sure we stayed popular rang in my ears. If I showed up to school without that ring, who knew what would happen?
    “Absolutely not.” Dad turned his back to me and lifted the lid of the laptop again.
    “If I don’t have that ring, Tom might break up with me!”
    “Then he didn’t really care about you to begin with,” Dad said without turning around.
    “Dad!”
    He punched the words D OWN SYNDROME into Google.
    “It’s not my fault!” I screamed.
    “Of course it’s your fault,” he answered automatically. “You took off the ring and forgot to put it back on. Who else is to blame for that?”
    “No!” I snapped, knowing the words about to spill out of my mouth wouldn’t help but not being able to stop them. “That’s not what I mean. I mean, it’s not my fault Molly’s retarded and you’re all—”
    I couldn’t finish, not with Dad jumping to his feet and storming toward me. Somehow I