Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie by David Lubar Page B

cabinets. Beware! Sharp tools.Heavy objects. Zillions of plastic bags. Mold spores by the billion! It’s a wonder Bobby and I survived the sharp-edged, smothering, high-voltage death trap we called home.
    Mom went on a mission to remedy the situation. She drafted Dad to help. I suspect that eventually there’ll be nothing in the house except foam-rubber furniture and rodent decals.
    October 20
    Hey, you awake in there? Got a question for you. I’ve been trying to figure something out. Sadly, you’re the only entity who’s available at the moment. Anyhow, here’s the question. I’m thinking about doing my next article as a series of couplets. They’re easy to write. It’s just two lines that rhyme. Like, if you were describing one of our football games, you could say:
    We had the ball
.
    Not at all
.
    Sometimes, a couplet has a title that’s longer than the poem.
Our Quarterback’s Strategy for Finding a Receiver
    He threw each pass
Right at the grass
.
    You get the idea. And don’t worry, I’m smart enough not to write anything that will get me in trouble. Like:
A Brief History of Panther Touchdowns
    Vernon
Didn’t earn ‘em
.
    So what do you think? Good idea? Bad idea? Send me a message. Kick once for
yes
and twice for
no
. Wait, I forgot, you probably don’t have any muscles yet. Or feet.
    Oh, ick
,
    You can’t kick
.

{ fourteen }
    m onday, in English, Mr. Franka said, “My friends, allow me to introduce you to Percy Bysshe Shelley.”
    After we’d stopped laughing at his name, we spent the period reading his poems. While I wasn’t super thrilled by his stuff, Mr. Franka mentioned that his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, wrote
Frankenstein
. He also told us that the two of them were friends with Byron. And they all hung out with this other guy named Polidori, who’d written a vampire story. Now I knew I had to get my hands on that ghost poem.
    Tuesday, we studied haiku. Wednesday, we got our school pictures. I had no idea that my hair was that weird after gym class. I looked like a chipmunk. Mom went all gooey when she saw the picture, like she doesn’t see me live and in person every single day. But she’d been pretty emotional the last couple weeks. She cried a lot when she watched movies on TV. Even during funny shows. I think there’s more going on inside her than Dad and I will ever understand.
    I got cornered by Mouth on Thursday at the bus stop. “Hey, ready for the dance?” he asked.
    I glanced over at Julia and tried to think of some reply thatwould lure her into the conversation. But Mouth didn’t leave me an opening.
    “What are you planning to wear? I bought a new shirt. It’s got stripes, so it makes me look taller. Girls like tall guys. Your brother is real tall, isn’t he? I don’t know if I should wear shoes or sneakers. What are you wearing?” He actually paused long enough for me to slip in an answer.
    “Sneakers,” I told him.
    “That’s what I thought. But what if everyone else is wearing shoes? Maybe I can put a pair of shoes in my locker. Extra shirts, too. Because I sweat a lot. Mom says I have a fast metabolism. I go through deodorant like crazy. I tried a roll-on, but I think a stick works better for me. I don’t want to use a spray because you can breathe it in, which is a big waste since lungs don’t sweat, right? I mean, there’s no way they could, because then we’d all drown. Imagine that. Drowning in your own sweat.”
    At that point, I stopped listening and passed the time composing couplets. Such as:
    Me dance
?
    Fat chance
.
    I went to the dance right from the game. I wore old sneakers and an old shirt. It didn’t matter. I could have dressed in a tux or wrapped myself in aluminum foil. The result would still have been the same. Patrick, Kyle, and I stood near the wall the whole time, drinking store-brand soda and eating thosereally cheap potato chips—the ones that are so thin you can read through them and so greasy they almost slip out of your