My Life as a Book Read Free Page A

summer?” Matt asks.
    I shrug and dig at the vein of fudge buried along the side of the carton.
    â€œMartha’s Vineyard. Isn’t that where the girl in that newspaper article drowned?”
    I suddenly feel envious of Matt’s vacation plans. Not because his family is going away and we’re not, but because he is one step closer to having a real adventure than I am.
    â€œWhy don’t you ask your mom if you can take me? I took you to San Francisco last year, remember?” Since I’m an only child, my parents often let me take friends on vacation. Sometimes I take Matt, and sometimes I just take Bodi.

    Matt tries to get at the fudge by fencing his spoon with mine. I finally move my spoon out of the way to make room for his.
    â€œI’ll ask my mom if you can come. But it’s three thousand miles to the Vineyard. I’m not sure what she’s going to say.”
    I whisper a prayer from inside my head straight to Matt’s mom. Say yes; I’ll be good. Say yes; I’ll be good.
    When we finally get home, my mother tests the avocados in her hand and tells me they’re overripe and will be brown inside. She sweeps them off the counter into the trash, then wipes off my chocolate mustache with the dish towel. She uses a little too much force, but I don’t complain. We have takeout Chinese food for dinner and I don’t complain about that either. I take a thumbtack and fasten the slip from my fortune cookie onto the bulletin board in my room: A STORY WILL UNFOLD BEFORE YOU . I bury myself underneath the covers and hope it will be true. If only I could get the guys at the fortune cookie factory to do my summer book report too.

    I focus on my new plan—to talk Matt’s mom into letting me accompany them on vacation.

Poor Dad
    Even though it’s summer vacation, I don’t mind going to work with my dad. He’s an artist who draws storyboards for films, and today he’s working with a director shooting a horror movie. It’s great to spend the day on a movie set scattered with fake body parts and chainsaws. While my father meets with the director about how he wants the storyboard to look, I bug the prop man to give me his recipe for fake blood. The guy laughs but won’t let me in on his secret.

    When Dad and I eat lunch in the studio cafeteria, I check out his sketches. They’re the kind of basic drawings I make for my vocabulary words but with better backgrounds and from different angles.
    I laugh when I see an actress with pretend blood on her arms, eating a salad at the next table. But Dad doesn’t pay attention to her; he’s looking at the man she’s with, a young guy with cool glasses and a goatee. Dad looks down at his drawings and suddenly seems sad. I ask him what’s the matter.

    â€œThey get younger and younger all the time,” he says.
    â€œThe actors?”

    He shakes his head. “The artists. They come out of school now with all this animation experience. It’s tough to compete.” He tucks his sketches under his jacket on the chair beside him.
    I know the conversation is going to come back around to me. When you’re an only child, it always does.
    â€œThat’s why it’s important for you to keep up with your schoolwork. It’s a tough job market out there.”
    I want to remind him that I’m only twelve, but he seems depressed, so I don’t bother. When we head back home, I don’t ask him to stop at the comic book store in case that will make him feel even worse.
    Later, when Dad falls asleep on the couch watching the news, I get an idea. I take one of the markers from his worktable and start to make him a little younger looking. My father sleeps as heavily as a giant woolly mammoth and doesn’t wake up until my mother walks into the room and screams.
    â€œDerek! What are you doing?”
    â€œJust practicing my artistic skills.”

    She starts to laugh when she