Connect the Stars Read Free

velvet cake, and now you know I had the party, and I don’t care that much, but it is just a little bit awkward, so I think we should both just forget about it and move on.’ Did you ever think of just saying that? Instead of making up a lie about your grandmother having pneumonia in not one, but both lungs ? Old people can die from that. Did you know that, Lyza?”
    And if you were hoeing your bean field in your straw hat and old clothes, miles away from Harriet Tubman Middle School, Lyza would not have started waving her arms around, her big, shiny, obviously new silver bracelet with the rhinestone cursive L dangling from it would not have been practically blinding you, and she would not have started shrieking indignantly, “How dare you call me a liar? Yeah, we’re not friends because—guess what?—you don’t have any friends anymore because you think you’re so great and no one can stand you!” so loudly that everyone in the entire school and possibly everyone in the entire town and possibly even Lyza’s grandmother in California could hear.
    And all of this is why I should have moved to that house in the woods before middle school even started.
    Because I had made a vow never to lie, I couldn’t say, even to myself, that what Lyza said to me didn’t hurt. It hurt a lot, and part of the reason it did is that it was—at least partly—true. I had decided weeks ago to just stop having friends (except Janie) because if you didn’t have any friends, you didn’t have to walk around worrying that one of them was going to lie to you. I’d stopped answering texts, stopped asking people over, stopped acceptinginvitations, and people noticed. They thought I was pushing them away, which I guess I was. Still, it hurt like a kick to the shins to hear Lyza say that I didn’t have friends. I stood there, pressing my books against my chest to keep from shaking as she stared at me triumphantly.
    â€œThat’s not true,” I said. My voice came out so small, it was almost a whisper. “Janie’s my friend.”
    Lyza rolled her eyes and said, “Hah! Janie hardly ever even comes to school anymore, probably so she doesn’t have to see you . And when she does come, she hardly ever talks anymore, probably because she doesn’t want to talk to you .”
    â€œShe’s been sick a lot lately,” I said.
    â€œSick of you,” said Lyza.
    That’s when I did what I should have done from the beginning—turned my back on Lyza and walked away. A minor crowd had formed around us, and as I walked through it, I looked for Janie’s face, but it wasn’t there. I remembered her saying something about maybe coming in late that day.
    As I made my way through the throng of onlookers, kids jumped back or turned sideways to let me pass, like actual contact with me might bring them bad luck, like friendlessness was contagious. I thought about striding straight past my classroom, out the door of the school, andinto the woods. That’s what Henry David Thoreau would have done. But Henry David Thoreau probably never had a last-period math test that was worth one-eighth of his grade. I walked to my class. I stayed.
    And that turned out to be a big mistake.

CHAPTER TWO
Aaron Archer
    Dolley Madison Middle School
    West Chester County, Pennsylvania
    I CAN REMEMBER ALMOST ANYTHING. When I run across a fact on Google, or in the pages of a history book, or pretty much anywhere else, it goes into a folder on my mental hard drive. If I need it later, I click the folder, and out pops the fact.
    And sometimes facts pop out whether I need them or not.
    If I hear a symphony, or overhear a conversation, I can play the whole thing back in my head, note for note, word for word, like it’s streaming over the internet from a giant data server in rural Oregon. Except it’s not in Oregon. It’s in my brain.
    Most people think it would be great to