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prizes, but I didnâtwant her to stop liking me, so I lost around 30 pounds that year. I hate soft drinks anyhow, so that part was easy, and I only let myself have two slices of cake after supper. Two slices and that was it. Every time I stopped at two, I felt I was doing it for Mrs. Johnston, and it was as if she was watching me. All evening I wanted to go to the kitchen and take another slice, but I didnât.
I earned six prizes in all:
The Hound of the Baskervilles
, Rubikâs Tangle which is little pictures of ropes that you have to connect, a book about famous women and what they did, eight nature postcards that folded like an accordion, Brain Quest Weird Stuff (Strange, Gross and Unbelievable But True Facts), and a collection of crossword puzzles about cats. I think Mrs. Johnston probably found the prizes in garage sales, but they were in perfect condition.
The class was for dummies, but Mrs. Johnston said that if we didnât understand something it was her fault, not ours, because she wasnât doing a good job explaining it. Like when she was trying to explain to us that four quarters make a dollar and two nickels make a dime â a lot of kids were having trouble with that (as I said, the dummy class), so finally she turned it into a game. She made some kids into pennies and some kids were nickels and some were dimes and quarters, and that was how those kids finally learned it. I was the only dollar.
Every day before the bell she read us another chapter from
Tom Sawyer
. We didnât really know what was goingon, but we still liked it. She hated gum chewing. She spent a lot of time on how to use commas. She really drummed it into us about commas. Commas and apostrophes. And capital letters and indent. To indent you put two fingers on the page. She liked cucumber sandwiches. Thatâs what she ate for lunch every day. She was skinny. She made us sign a pledge that we would never smoke, and she gave us all the reasons why smoking was bad. She said it was like drinking from a lake that had gasoline and tar and sewage flowing into it. And if you thought that was disgusting then it didnât make sense to smoke, because you were doing the exact same thing as drinking from that lake. She always used to say âYouâre right, Iâm wrongâ when she made a mistake. She had a principle about that.
I wish real life had points. Points for every time you did the laundry and went shopping and didnât throttle someone. Then when you had 100 points, the President of the World would send you a computer, or a car.
Iâm going to sleep now, even though itâs early. Beauty is sleeping right next to me, with her head on the pillow like a human.
Yours forever,
Fern
Wednesday
November 21
Hi Xanoth,
I had a lot of really bad dreams last night. They started off with the story in
Murder Times Nine
, which is about nine people who get murdered one by one, and the detective is trying to find the connection between them. But then everything changed in the dream and it got very weird and scary.
I finally woke up. I made breakfast and then I called Sunnyview and told them I wasnât coming back. The secretary took the message.
I also wrote to my uncle. I just said,
Hi Jack. Iâm sorry to have to tell you that Mom died. Felicity, I mean. I donât know if youâre still at this address. I also donât know how long Iâll be staying here, so if you write back send your letter to 301 Prince Albert in Westmount. I donât know the postal code but you can look it up. Itâs one of the places where Mom cleaned. Your niece, Fern.
I put it in an envelope from the junk mail downstairs.I crossed out VISA and wrote Jackâs address instead. All I needed was a stamp.
I donât even know what Jack looks like. Mom has two photos of him, but in one heâs a kid and the other is from too far to see much.
After that I had to do something. I knew if I sat around the
I earned six prizes in all:
The Hound of the Baskervilles
, Rubikâs Tangle which is little pictures of ropes that you have to connect, a book about famous women and what they did, eight nature postcards that folded like an accordion, Brain Quest Weird Stuff (Strange, Gross and Unbelievable But True Facts), and a collection of crossword puzzles about cats. I think Mrs. Johnston probably found the prizes in garage sales, but they were in perfect condition.
The class was for dummies, but Mrs. Johnston said that if we didnât understand something it was her fault, not ours, because she wasnât doing a good job explaining it. Like when she was trying to explain to us that four quarters make a dollar and two nickels make a dime â a lot of kids were having trouble with that (as I said, the dummy class), so finally she turned it into a game. She made some kids into pennies and some kids were nickels and some were dimes and quarters, and that was how those kids finally learned it. I was the only dollar.
Every day before the bell she read us another chapter from
Tom Sawyer
. We didnât really know what was goingon, but we still liked it. She hated gum chewing. She spent a lot of time on how to use commas. She really drummed it into us about commas. Commas and apostrophes. And capital letters and indent. To indent you put two fingers on the page. She liked cucumber sandwiches. Thatâs what she ate for lunch every day. She was skinny. She made us sign a pledge that we would never smoke, and she gave us all the reasons why smoking was bad. She said it was like drinking from a lake that had gasoline and tar and sewage flowing into it. And if you thought that was disgusting then it didnât make sense to smoke, because you were doing the exact same thing as drinking from that lake. She always used to say âYouâre right, Iâm wrongâ when she made a mistake. She had a principle about that.
I wish real life had points. Points for every time you did the laundry and went shopping and didnât throttle someone. Then when you had 100 points, the President of the World would send you a computer, or a car.
Iâm going to sleep now, even though itâs early. Beauty is sleeping right next to me, with her head on the pillow like a human.
Yours forever,
Fern
Wednesday
November 21
Hi Xanoth,
I had a lot of really bad dreams last night. They started off with the story in
Murder Times Nine
, which is about nine people who get murdered one by one, and the detective is trying to find the connection between them. But then everything changed in the dream and it got very weird and scary.
I finally woke up. I made breakfast and then I called Sunnyview and told them I wasnât coming back. The secretary took the message.
I also wrote to my uncle. I just said,
Hi Jack. Iâm sorry to have to tell you that Mom died. Felicity, I mean. I donât know if youâre still at this address. I also donât know how long Iâll be staying here, so if you write back send your letter to 301 Prince Albert in Westmount. I donât know the postal code but you can look it up. Itâs one of the places where Mom cleaned. Your niece, Fern.
I put it in an envelope from the junk mail downstairs.I crossed out VISA and wrote Jackâs address instead. All I needed was a stamp.
I donât even know what Jack looks like. Mom has two photos of him, but in one heâs a kid and the other is from too far to see much.
After that I had to do something. I knew if I sat around the
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