After Ever After (9780545292788) by Jordan Sonnenblick Page A

never actually tell you all this stuff, but I have to at least write it out. Obviously, I couldn’t tell Tad, because I’d be getting all dorky and misty-eyed about Lindsey, and he’d be all, “Get … me … a … bucket! Must … spew!”
    So who else is there? Mom? Yeah, that would be a comfortable and useful chat. Or Dad? Can you imagine? “Uh, Dad, did you ever feel like you and Mom were, like, destined to meet?” “Well, son, there are a lot of variables that determine who we meet. For example, where we were born. If there are, say, thirty thousand towns in America alone, and each has, on average, five thousand adolescents of each gender … but wait — you have to factor in that the vast majority marry partners who are within just a few years of their age. Hmm … and then some percentage of the population moves at least once every few years. Tell you what, Jeff — I can write an equation for this, if you’d like. Does that sound like fun?”
    Nah, I’d rather go flatten my tongue with a steam iron.
    Anyway, that was Christmas with Lindsey. Meanwhile, Tad has still been completely strange. Usually, he’s slightly nice to me, but horrible to everyone else. This week, after he got in trouble with Miss Palma (remember — the only freaking person you ever e-mail?), he decided that he is going to be kind to everyone.
    Except me. And I have no idea what I did wrong.
    Meanwhile, I haven’t mentioned the worst thing of all. We took a pretest for the statewide math test right before vacation, and I’m pretty sure I failed it. Tad asked me how I did, and I gave him a little thumbs-up sign. Lindsey asked, too, and I changed the subject. Mom and Dad asked, and I screamed and yelled at them to trust me, for a change. Truthfully, I felt like I was being kind of harsh, but I’d rather get in trouble for having an attitude than for having brain damage (long story).
    So over this whole break, even while I was opening presents, or all cozied up with Lindsey, the pretest has been rattling around in the pit of my stomach. If I did fail this thing, all H-E-double-hockey-sticks is going to break loose.
    Usually when I write one of these pretend letters to you, my big hope is that you’ll come home and we can be brothers again. But right now, I’d be kind of cool with just fleeing to Africa to hang out with you for a while. I’d miss Lindsey, but hey — maybe she could visit me and we could ride a llama together or something.
    Or a yak. Does either one of those live in Africa?
    All right, gotta go read for English. When you had Miss Palma, was she totally in love with a really hard play called Cyrano de Bergerac ? Don’t tell anybody, but it’s kind of good.
    Your brother,
Jeff
    So that was my holiday week. The only part I didn’t put in there was all the stuff about how stupid and helpless Mom thinks I am, or how Dad thinks I could just shrug off my math problem if I tried a little harder. Oh, I also left out all the times I begged them to let me go to Lindsey’s house or meet her somewhere. We talked on the phone for millions of hours, but that’s not the same as being together.
    Can you believe I was psyched to get back to school?
    At least until I got there. On the first day back, Dr. Galley called me downstairs again. There was a girl walking out of her office in tears, holding a fistful of candy hearts, which didn’t seem like a good omen.When I got in there, Dr. Galley was refilling her little glass dish from a huge industrial-size bag of hearts — also not a sign of good fortune. She started me off with small talk about my Christmas, but before I could even finish pretending to be excited about my presents, she shoved the little dish my way.
    The pretest scores were back. I had failed, big-time. Now I would have to attend a special extra math class on Tuesdays and Wednesdays after school. I asked her