Set the Record Straight! Read Online Free Page B

that?
    â€œHey.” Allie was back in my doorway.
    â€œHey,” I said.
    â€œListen, if you want me to, I can tell little Mikey’s brothers
     that you like him. That way maybe he’ll—”
    â€œNo!” I bellowed, jumping out of my seat and
     running toward Allie. “No way!”
    Allie looked shocked. “Okay, okay. Sheesh! I was just trying to help.
     Sometimes if you do a little work behind the scenes . . .”
    â€œNo! Just . . . no.” I closed my eyes.
    â€œFine, whatevs.” Allie was not one to dwell on other
     people’s problems. Well, unless they were her friends. She certainly wasn’t
     going to dwell on mine. She abruptly switched gears. “Listen, I need to post a
     link on the high-school website to a blog or another site that has healthy snack
     recipes. I thought with all your Internetting around, you might have seen
     something.” Allie folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the
     doorway.
    My blood was still boiling, and I really wasn’t in the mood to help her
     now.
    â€œI don’t know. I’ll think about it,” I said. I slid
     past her and headed downstairs for a snack.
    â€œThink fast,” she said, and she returned to her room.
    Downstairs in the kitchen, I found a bananaand some
     peanut butter and raisins, and made my version of ants on a log.
    â€œSam, honey? Is that you?” my mother called from the den, which is
     also her office.
    â€œHi, Mom,” I said. I tried not to sound sad, or she’d come
     in here to try to pry it out of me.
    Which, of course, she did, anyway.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” she asked, climbing the few stairs from the
     den to our kitchen.
    â€œNothing,” I lied.
    She put her lips to my forehead to see if I had a fever, but I squirmed away,
     so she sat down next to me at the kitchen table and then propped her chin onto her
     hands. My mom is a freelance accountant and bookkeeper, so she loves concrete facts as
     much as I do, even though hers are numbers and mine are words.
    â€œIs everything okay with Hailey?” she asked.
    â€œYeah, and school’s fine, and everything’s fine,” I
     said.
    â€œHow about the paper?” she asked. Then she dropped her voice to a
     whisper, “And the column?”
    Typical. My mom has ESP, I’m sure of it.How else
     could she hit the nail on the head within the first two minutes?
    â€œIt’s . . . okay,” I said.
    Now my mom knew she was on to something. She leaned in closer, still
     whispering, “Are the letters tough?”
    I nodded, and put my finger to my lips. I didn’t want Allie to hear
     anything. Not that she could, all the way upstairs, but still.
    â€œHard to give advice?” she asked again.
    I nodded again.
    She sighed. “I know how you feel. It’s kind of like being a
     parent,” she said.
    Hmm. Now this might be interesting. “How?” I asked in a normal
     voice. Allie wouldn’t know what we were talking about, anyway. Besides, even if it
     crossed her mind that I was Dear Know-It-All, she’d probably laugh off the whole
     idea, thinking I wasn’t qualified.
    My mom continued. “People need to learn from their own mistakes. You
     can’t protect them from everything. You need to let them find their own way.
     That’s why I think it’s important tokeep advice
     open-ended, unless you have a very strong conviction about something. I mean, if an
     issue is black and white—like, don’t cheat, don’t steal, don’t
     smoke—by all means give specific advice. But when it comes to choosing a path,
     sometimes people have to go through a process on their own.”
    â€œOkay,” I said. “But then what do I tell people to do? It
     would be kind of a lame column if all I said was, ‘Follow your
     heart.’”
    â€œWould it?” my mom asked.
    I shrugged.