Double Dutch Read Free

had written. It was all tiny scribble.
    They were starting a book called
Lord of the Flies
—something about kids in a jungle, she figured from the picture on the front.
I’ve got to see if there’s a videotape of this,
Delia thought. She flipped through the pages and sighed as line after incomprehensible line of gray text stared back at her. She recognized many of the words—the shorter ones, and the words that were easy to identify or memorize. But sometimes even those danced around the page like unruly children. Sometimes an easy word like “boy” looked like “yob.” And sometimes it looked like the whole page was written in Martian. She sighed, frowned, and listened carefully to every word Miss Benson was saying. She had an excellent memory and could sometimes tell the teacher word for word what had been said in class the day before. But Delia couldn’t read.

two
    R ANDY WAS THINKING OF D ELIA AS HE LET HIMSELF INTO the small apartment he shared with his father. Delia seemed to have it all together, he thought—she was smart, pretty, and never made a fool of herself in class like he did sometimes.
    A skinny gray cat stretched and jumped off the kitchen table, where she knew she shouldn’t have been sleeping. Randy ignored the cat, tossed his book bag on the floor, took off his shoes and socks, and walked around barefoot on the cool floor. He loved to walk barefoot, and since there was no one there except the cat to complain about his stinky feet, he allowed himself to do as he pleased.
    Randy had just turned fourteen, and he already stood over six feet tall. He carried his two hundred pounds with ease, but he stayed hungry. Large meals seemed to last only a few minutes before he was starving again. School lunches were a joke to Randy’s huge appetite. His father had told him once, “Boy, you’re just like that gas-guzzling truck I got-can’t keep either one of you filled up!”
    Randy fixed himself five bologna sandwiches, using the last of the bread, even the ends, and started to pour a glass of milk. He looked at the glass, shook his head, then put it back in the cupboard and drank directly from the carton.He noticed that the carton was nearly empty. He found two large bags of potato chips and three Twinkies in another cupboard and took his snack to the next room to watch TV. He stretched out on the sofa, idly flicking the remote control while he gobbled his food. He paused at one of the afternoon talk shows. The announcer was saying, “We now return to ‘Teens Who Terrify’!” Randy had seen many talk shows like this. The host would interview parents who couldn’t handle their impossible teenagers, who were unbelievably rude or vicious or dangerous. Today a twelve-year-old dressed like a twenty-five-year-old stripper was cursing at her mother, every other word bleeped out by the TV station. The mother, who did not even try to correct the behavior, simply sat there and cried. “Kid needs her butt kicked,” Randy said to the cat. Another young girl, dressed in an outfit her mother said she wore to school-a skimpy tank top and a skirt that was short enough to be called underwear—pranced around the stage as if she was proud of what she was wearing. Her mother wept also. “This couldn’t be real—they’ve gotta be actors. Where do they get this stuff?” Randy complained to the cat, who had her eyes on what was left of Randy’s bologna sandwiches.
    He watched as more parents reported how their children beat them or stole from them or stayed out all weekend getting drunk. “Unbelievable,” Randy muttered. “This is so fake!” The cat had decided to join him on the sofa.
    â€œOur next guests,” the host announced with pumped-up excitement, using that phony, oily voice that only TV announcers use, “are twins who terrify their whole neighborhood!” Randy reached for the remote,