The Naked Mole-Rat Letters Read Free

why were you jumping on my bed anyway?”
    â€œI like to.”
    â€œJump on your own bed.”
    â€œYour bed’s better. Your blanket is ‘swimming pool blue.’ And what are those curler things for anyway?”
    â€œYou roll your hair up in them and sleep on them, and in the morning you have curly hair. Mrs. Whitehead let me borrow them.”
    I looked at the clock and had the second heart attack of the day. 7:30! How could it be7:30? My alarm clock was set for 6:45. Did I turn it off and go back to sleep?
    I had wanted to wake up early so that I would have plenty of time to check the e-mail situation and to fix my hair and get especially dressed up for the audition. Now I would barely have time to get out the door.
    Skip walked in. “Dad said I’m supposed to wake you up. Your head looks weird.”
    â€œThanks a lot! Why didn’t he think of that an hour ago?”
    Nutter grinned at Skip. “I woked her up when I landed on her butt.”
    I shoved Skip and Nutter out the door.
    Nutter glued his hands and feet to my doorway. “Skip and me want to practice diving on your bed.”
    â€œGo dive on your head!” I peeled him off and slammed the door.
    The third heart attack came when I tried to take the curlers out of my hair. Mrs. Whitehead showed me how to do it, but I must have done it wrong. My hair was all twisted and tangled, and I couldn’t get the curlers out.
    I was not prepared for what I’d find in thekitchen. Dad should have been making Skip’s and Nutter’s lunches and listening to serious news on the radio. Instead he had the rock-and-roll station on and was singing. Skip and Nutter were sliding around in their stocking feet, playing air guitars.
    â€œCome on, Frankie, join in.” Dad handed me a box of foil like it was a microphone. Then he squinted at my hair. “Are those curlers in there?”
    â€œYes! And I can’t get them out.”
    The three of them started laughing.
    I glared at Dad. “This is not funny. You have to get them out.”
    Dad tore out half my hair getting the curlers out, and when I looked in the mirror . . . well, that was the fourth heart attack. My hair looked exactly like a nest made by a blind squirrel on drugs.
    I had no choice but to stick my head under the faucet.
    At school I couldn’t concentrate. In first period math I had to solve a problem on the board; and while I was doing it, everybody was laughing. At first I thought it was becauseI was doing the math problem wrong. Then I heard Jerry Parks whisper to Johnny Nye, “What are those?” I felt the back of my head, and my heart absolutely stopped. Two curlers sticking out like Frankenstein bolts.
    I tried to pull them out. No such luck. So I calmly put the chalk down and walked over to Mr. Peter’s desk. “May I please go to the bathroom?”
    Last year, Ms. Young would have let me go right away. Ms. Young was the most wonderful sixth-grade teacher in the world. She should have asked to teach seventh grade so that I could have her again this year.
    I should have known that Mr. Peter wouldn’t let me go to the bathroom. Mr. Peter is not a living, breathing human being with a heart that has attacks. Mr. Peter is a battery-operated calculator in the shape of a human being. And his batteries aren’t showing any signs of wearing out. “You can go after the lesson,” he said, and wrote me a pass.
    For the remainder of the lesson, everyone stared at me while I sat at my desk and fumigated (fumed? emitted fumes?). Beth tried tocatch my eye, but for her own good I wouldn’t look up. If I had looked at her, my angry gaze would have burned her eyeballs out. How could my best friend, who sits right next to me, have missed two curlers sticking out the back of my head?
Are you blind, Beth?
    For that matter, how could Dad have missed them? Maybe if he hadn’t been dancing around and singing to the