The Julian Chapter: A Wonder Story Read Online Free Page B

issues they’re not equipped to deal with! They’re just too young to be exposed to this kind of stuff! That Tushman is an
idiot
!”
    And she said a whole bunch of other things, too, but those are kind of too inapro-pro (if you know what I mean) for me to repeat.
    “But, Dad, I don’t want Jack to get ecthpelled from thkool,” I said later on in the night. He was putting more ice on my mouth because the painkiller they had given me at the hospital was wearing off.
    “That’s not up to us,” he answered. “But I wouldn’t trouble myself about it if I were you. Whatever happens, Jack will get what he deserves for this.”
    I have to admit, I started feeling kind of bad for Jack. I mean,sure, he was a total dipstick for punching me, and I wanted him to get in trouble—but I really didn’t want him to get kicked out of school or anything.
    But Mom, I could tell, was on one of her missions now (as Dad would say). She gets like that sometimes, when she gets so outraged about something that there’s just no stopping her. She was like that a few years ago when a kid got hit by a car a couple of blocks away from Beecher Prep, and she had like a million people sign a petition to have a traffic light installed. That was a super-mom moment. She was also like that last month when our favorite restaurant changed its menu and they no longer made my favorite dish the way I liked it. That was another super-mom moment because after she talked to the new owner, they agreed to special-order the dish—just for me! But Mom also gets like that for not-so-nice stuff, like when a waiter messes up a food order. That’s a not-so-super-mom moment because, well, you know, it can get kind of weird when your mom starts talking to a waiter like he’s five years old.
Awkward!
Also, like Dad says, you don’t want to get a waiter mad at you, you know? They have
your
food in
their
hands—duh!
    So, I wasn’t totally clear on how I felt when I realized that my mom was declaring war on Mr. Tushman, Auggie Pullman, and all of Beecher Prep. Was it going to be a super-mom moment or a not-so-super-mom moment? Like, would it end up with Auggie going to a different school—yay!—or with Mr. Tushman blowing his nose in my cafeteria food—ugh!

It took about two weeks for the swelling to go completely down. Because of that, we ended up not going to Paris over winter break. Mom didn’t want our relatives to see me looking like I’d been in a “prize fight.” She also wouldn’t take any pictures of me over the holidays because she said she didn’t want to remember me looking like that. For our annual Christmas card, we used one of the rejects from last year’s photo shoot.
    Even though I wasn’t having a lot of nightmares anymore, the fact that I had started having nightmares again really worried Mom. I could tell she was totally stressed out about it. Then, the day before our Christmas party, she found out from one of the other moms that Auggie had not been through the same kind of admissions screening that the rest of us had been. See, every kid who applies to Beecher Prep is supposed to be interviewed and take a test at the school—but some kind of exception had been made for Auggie. He didn’t come to the school for the interview and he got to take the admissions test at home. Mom thought that was really unfair!
    “This kid should not have gotten into the school,” I heard her telling a group of other moms at the party. “Beecher Prep is just not set up to handle situations like this! We’re not an inclusion school! We don’t have the psychologists needed to deal with how it affects the other kids. Poor Julian had nightmares for a whole month!”
    Ugh, Mom!
I hate your telling people about my nightmares!
    “Henry was upset as well,” Henry’s mom said, and the othermoms nodded.
    “They didn’t even prepare us beforehand!” Mom went on. “That’s what gets me the most. If they’re not going to provide additional psychological