The Meaning of Maggie Read Online Free

“There’s a lot of ‘what ifs’ in life, Mags. You owe it to yourself to see what’s out there. You know every president takes a different path.”
    I considered it. What if one day I hitchhiked across the country? Nope. Too many ax murderers. What if one day I took a plane out west? Maybe. I did like to fly because when you fly you get to chew gum even though it rots your teeth. What if my Magic Markers made protest posters? I did have a lot to protest, both related to Tiffany and unrelated to Tiffany. What if I had friends with dreams and VW buses? Sure, that sounded cooler than friends with regular buses. What if one day I grew my hair so long every strand told a different story? That sounded really cool. Although too bad my face was so round. I could never have long hair. At least that’s what Tiffany said.
    I was really starting to get confused. That morning I’d known exactly what I wanted. I wanted to be president and I wanted to be rich, not necessarily in that order. But now Dad was making it seem like there was more to life than all of that, WHICH WAS NEWS TO ME.
    I’d always thought that all the answers to life’s questions were in books. I’d thought knowing where the sidewalk ended and where the red fern grew and where the wild things were could help me figure out LIFE. But maybe Dad was right. What if I needed to write my own story? I closed my eyes and the weightof the world settled on my eyelids. And when I opened them, I realized my legs were also crossed like a pretzel.
    My head was going to explode. Plus, I was up way past my school night/summer vacation bedtime.
    â€œI can’t deal with all this possibility at once. So I will bid you farewell, family.” I tipped my pretend cap toward Dad. “Until tomorrow, good sir.”
    I headed down the hall for some well-earned rest when Mom called after me, “What about your cake?”
    I turned around. She was holding the chocolate-on-chocolate cake I’d begged for with eleven yellow candles burning just for me. As much as I wanted to retire for the evening, it was my civic duty to make a wish. And while there wasn’t any scientific evidence, I believed with all my heart that the world progressed one wish at a time. That’s why while my family sang “Happy Birthday,” I thought long and hard about what I wanted most in the whole wide world. And the list was long.
    Should I wish newsman Hank would call me the next day and ask for a front-page interview? Should I wish for my own room like I had every single year before? Should I wish Dad’s legs would wake up again? Or was that wish too big for just eleven candles? Would I have to wait for that one until I was older, when I had more wish power?
    There were too many wishes to consider. So I took a deep breath and wished for the wish that jumped fastest to the front of my mind.

CHAPTER THREE
    I wished school was all year ’round!
    And even though my dream didn’t come true, September arrived and before I knew it, the first bell of the school year rang. The first bell of the school year was probably my favorite sound ever. And this first bell was even more special because I was in a whole new school in a whole new grade with whole new kids. It was a new beginning, a blank slate, a manifest destiny. My heart raced and not just because I was running late because my locker was jammed with encyclopedias D through F, which I had brought with me JUST IN CASE. My heart raced because I was totally enveloped in the thrilling pursuit of KNOWLEDGE.
    Middle school was super fancy compared to elementary school especially since they’d done away with that waste of learning time called recess. Which was whysixth grade was definitely going to be my most knowledgeable grade yet.
    My first class of the day was English which would be a breeze because I’d already read most of the required reading over the summer. Reading the books a second