The Cat Ate My Gymsuit Read Online Free

would be good for me. I asked her why.
    “Oh, Marcy. You know. You’re so hung up aboutyour weight . . .you and your family don’t talk to each other . . .and you’re so afraid of things . . .and you shouldn’t be.”
    I just clumped along, biting my nails and thinking about what she had said.

CHAPTER 5
    S chool went on as usual. I kept getting good grades in everything but gym. My anonymous letters to the Student Council suggestion box were ignored. Lunches continued to be lousy. We were only up to the Civil War in history class.
    It was different in some ways, though. I didn’t sit alone at lunch anymore. I sat with some of the kids from Smedley. Ms. Finney’s classes were still great, but the rest of the classes seemed even more boringthan they were before she came. We kept asking the teachers to be more like her, but they made faces and told us to keep quiet. We talked out in classes more and asked more questions, but they didn’t like that. We even asked some of them to join Smedley, but they said things like “What are you doing? Getting your heads shrunk?” and “My contract doesn’t say I have to stay after school past last period.”
    What changed a lot was my home. It got even worse. My father has a horrible temper. He doesn’t hit, but he yells. Even worse, he says awful things to me, like “I don’t care if you get good grades. You do stupid things. Why do I have to have a daughter who is stupid and so fat? I’ll never get you married off.”
    My mother would try to tell him to stop, but he wouldn’t listen. They’d get into a fight and she’d start to cry and then go get a tranquilizer.
    Then my little brother, Stuart, would cry and run for his teddy bear. While all this was happening, my father would scream at me. “Look at what you’ve done. We’d never fight if it weren’t for you. Apologize.” By that time, I’m crying. It usually ended with me running upstairs, slamming my door, throwing myself on my bed, and rocking back and forth. Mymother would come in and hug me and tell me everything would be O.K., but that I really should lose some weight and look like everyone else.
    I hated it. That’s what usually went on in my house but, as I said, things got much worse.
    In a way, it was because of Smedley. We did lots of neat stuff in there, and I wanted to try some of it at home.
    One day in Smedley we broke up into small groups and told each other how we saw each other and felt about each other. I was really excited. Nobody said that they hated me. They said I was smart and nice, but too quiet and shy. No one made fun of me. They didn’t say I was skinny and beautiful, but they didn’t tell me I was ugly and fat either. So I thought that maybe it would be good to try it at home.
    My mother was all for it. I had told her about what we were doing in Smedley, and she really dug it, because she said it was making me different. I didn’t tell her how scared I still was, though. I wanted her to be proud of me.
    So one night at dinner, she explained that she wanted us all to sit around and talk like a family.
    My father said, “I’ve worked hard all day for thisfamily, Lily. Isn’t that enough? I don’t have to talk to all of you too, do I?”
    Mom very quietly said, “Martin, I think it’s important. Please.”
    So he said, “O.K. . . .for a little while.”
    Mom and I cleared off the dishes, and then we went into the living room, where my father was watching television. Stuart was sitting on the floor, stuffing pits into the hole in Wolf, his teddy bear. Stuart watches a lot of commercials, and he once saw that oranges are supposed to keep you healthy. He used to try to put whole oranges in Wolf, but things got pretty sticky, so we convinced him that pits are best for bears.
    My father frowned and said, “No, let the kid stay here. He’s part of the family too. And anyway, I want to talk to him about his stupid thumbsucking and that idiot teddy bear.”
    Stuart held