Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie Read Online Free

seemed to make her happy. It reminded me of when I was little and I used to dream up magic spells.
Abra-ca-dumbo. Hocus mucus. Presto squisho
.
    During the rest of the day, I got lost three more times, yelled at twice, and nearly trampled when I headed up a flight of stairs while everyone else on the planet was racing down. My last class was really far from my locker, which was really far from the parking lot. I almost missed the bus. By the time I left Zenger High, my head was stuffed with a jumble of facts and figures, and my backpack weighed eighty-five pounds. Between my homework and a couple comments I couldn’t resist adding, I’d already filled a page in my assignment book. At least it would be a short week, since school had started on a Wednesday. If this had been a Monday, I think I would have just quit right then and joined the army.
    “Man, high school is awesome,” Mouth said when we got on the bus. He looked like he’d been forced through a meat grinder at least twice. His clothes were rumpled, his backpack had footprints on it, and one of his shoelaces was missing. But he seemed happy.
    I tuned him out as he launched into more details about his awesome day.
Scott Hudson’s Assignment Book
    English
—Read “The Lottery.” Read chapter one in the textbook and answer the questions on page 19. Learn the first twenty vocabulary words.
    Art
—Read the article on Van Gogh. Sketch something interesting you find in your room. There’s that piece of pizza that fell behind my dresser last month.
    Algebra
—Read pages 7–14. Do the odd-numbered problems. From what I’ve seen, they’re all pretty odd.
    Spanish
—I don’t have a clue what I’m supposed to do. The teacher wrote the assignment on the board in Spanish. What the heck’s a
cuaderno
?
    History
—Read the first three chapters. Answer the questions at the end. Try to stay awake.
    Chemistry
—Read pages 3–14. Answer the questions on page 15. Count the atoms in your house. For extra credit, count the atoms in your neighborhood.

{ four }
    m om was in the kitchen when I got home from school. I thought she was looking through a photo album, but when I got closer I saw it was wallpaper samples.
    “You redecorating?” I asked.
    She looked up and said, “Hi, hon. How was school?”
    “Fine.” The page she’d stopped at had a pattern with little rocking horses on it. “Those things are dangerous,” I said.
    She flipped the book closed. “Would you like a snack?”
    “Maybe in a bit. I got a ton of stuff to do.” I headed upstairs to face my homework.
    I read the story Mr. Franka had assigned for English. It was really good. And creepy enough to give me hope that English would be fun this year. Then I read the article about Van Gogh, which was also pretty interesting, and also sort of creepy in its own way. The vocabulary list wasn’t a problem, since I already knew all but one of the words. I tried to decide what to do next, but none of it looked like much fun, so I read a couple more stories from the book. By then, it was time for dinner. Mom had roasted a chicken, with stuffing, mashed potatoes, and gravy. I figured I could get everything done easily enough after we ate.
    “How was school?” Dad asked. He’d just gotten home from work, but had already changed out of his button-down shirt. He runs the service department for Linwood Mercedes over in Allentown. He’d rather work on cars than boss around the guys who do the work, and he’d really rather work on classic American muscle cars than hugely expensive luxury vehicles, but the offer was too good to refuse. Besides, if he saves up enough, he can open his own garage someday and get to do what he really wants.
    “School was fine.” I grabbed the gravy and swamped my chicken.
    Dad looked at Mom. “Did you …?”
    Mom shook her head.
    “What?” I asked.
    “Nothing,” they both said. Too loudly, and too quickly.
    I figured I should let it drop. But I spotted the newspaper over