Sarah Simpson's Rules for Living Read Online Free

bins.
    The principal’s name is Gloria Alice Zebrowski. She is short and round and has grayish hair in tight little curls all over her head. When she was a little girl, she had long chestnut-brown ringlets. Ms. Zebrowski comes from New York City and grew up in an apartment building not far from Central Park. But she prefers living in Pelham, except that there’s nowhere to buy good bagels.
    I know all this because the year before my father left I spent a lot of time in her office because my grades were dropping and I was exhibiting antisocial behavior and Ms. Zebrowski would talk to me and then she would ask if I needed any help and if something was wrong at home.
    I always said no.
    Then Ms. Zebrowski would say that overcoming difficulties is what makes people stronger and that it’s important to hope for the best because then the best has a way of happening.
    I don’t think that no was exactly a lie. I think I was trying to make myself believe that there really wasn’t anything wrong. But I must have known deep down, because Sally and my father weren’t talking to each other much and my father was going off on all these “business trips.”
    That’s how Andrea said it, making her fingers go like quotation marks.
    The wife is always the last to know, Andrea said.
    Andrea doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Sally knew what was going on. She just didn’t tell me.
    The last to know is the kid.

MARCH 10
    ANNOYING QUESTIONS ASKED TODAY BY HORACE
    1. If you could create world peace by pressing a button and killing just one person, would you do it?
    2. If atoms are mostly space, how come we can’t walk through walls?
    3. How do you know the world is real and not just some enormous virtual-reality game being played by superior alien beings?
    4. Did you ever think that people would like you a lot better if you didn’t look so cross all the time?
    ANSWERS TO ANNOYING QUESTIONS ASKED TODAY BY HORACE
    1. Jason Dobbs said he wouldn’t do it because who wants world peace anyway. Jason’s older brother Preston is in the Marines. Katie Costello said she would do it, depending on who the person was. Maybe it would be some very old, mean person that nobody likes and who hardly had any more time to live anyway. “But what if it was somebody you really loved, like your father or mother?” Emily Harris said. “What if it was Kim?” I said.
    2. Ryan Matthews said that in theory we
can
walk through walls but that statistically it is very, very unlikely, and he should know because his mother is a physicist. A lot of the boys tried it and didn’t make it, which was too bad because I thought it would be sort of fun if Jason Dobbs got stuck halfway.
    3. Emily Harris said that the world being a virtual-reality game thing was stupid because if everything was a virtual-reality game, we’d all just be puppets and wouldn’t be able to think for ourselves. It doesn’t seem stupid to me. Except that I don’t think we live in a game being played by superior alien beings. I think we live in a game being played by some dumb sadistic alien teenager. The kind of creep who kicks anthills just to watch all the ants scuttle around and freak out.
    4. I asked Sally if I looked cross all the time and she said that it would be nice if I showed my beautiful smile more, which is the same thing as saying yes.

MARCH 13
Friday the 13 th
A Very Unlucky Day
    Today at school we talked about superstitions. Superstitions, says Ms. Bentley, are irrational beliefs. Reading your horoscope is a superstition. So is thinking that four-leaf clovers are lucky or worrying about black cats crossing your path or refusing to sit down if you’re the thirteenth person at the dinner table. This was our vocabulary word for the day:
    triskaidekaphobia
(n.) Fear of the number 13.
    Triskaidekaphobia, says Ms. Bentley, is a superstition. Friday the 13 th is no luckier or unluckier than any