Write This Down Read Free

starts out wobbly and quavery, but it gets louder and stronger as I keep on talking. “I’m going to be a famous writer, and then you’ll be sorry you ever made fun of me. I’m going to write something about you , and the whole world will read it and know what a terrible brother you turned into!”
    Then I stumble out of the room. And I do mean stumble. My Emily Dickinson dress is too long, so I catch my heel on it and trip against the kitchen table, whacking my knee so hard my eyes sting with tears.

 
    2
    â€œSo let’s brainstorm options,” I tell Kylee as I’m lying on her bed clutching her very pink stuffed elephant to my very flat chest. I texted Kylee that I needed to come over and told my mom I was going to her house, but I didn’t tell Mom what had happened. It’s too humiliating to tell anyone in the world except for Kylee.
    â€œOption number one,” I say. “I transfer to another school. Immediately.”
    Kylee shakes her head so hard her dark bangs fall over her eyes. “You’d have to start all new classes, and you’d be behind already in everything, and your best friend would miss you every minute of the day, and your parents would never let you.”
    â€œRight now we’re brainstorming,” I remind her. “Brainstorming means you think of everything, every single option, good and bad, without passing judgment on any of them. Like we did in Mr. Harris’s language arts class last year.”
    Besides, option number one sounds pretty good to me, at least compared to the option of going into journalism on Monday and facing Cameron after his brother heard my love poem. Even though David was the nicest to me of any of them, I can’t imagine that he won’t tell Cameron about it.
    â€œSo what’s option number two?” Kylee’s eyes stay fastened on me, her fingers effortlessly clicking her knitting needles down the next row of the pink-and-green-and-yellow scarf she’s knitting. She’s such a good knitter she doesn’t have to pay attention while she knits.
    â€œOption number two is I drop journalism.” I’d still have to see Cameron in the halls, but that’s totally different from sitting right next to him in class every single day.
    â€œNo!” Kylee moans. “That’s your favorite subject! And then we’d only have two classes together!”
    She obviously didn’t listen to my reminder about brainstorming.
    â€œOption number three,” I continue, but I can’t think of a third way to avoid having to see Cameron ever again for the rest of my life. “Run away?”
    â€œThat isn’t funny.” Now Kylee’s distressed enough that she puts down her knitting. “Option number three is that you forget about it. I’d bet you anything that David won’t even tell Cameron. Girls talk about boys a lot more than boys talk about girls.”
    Kylee herself never talks about boys. She doesn’t have a crush on anyone, though there’s this very short, mega-awkward boy named Henry Dubin who has a crush on her; he’s in science with Kylee, and art. You can tell he likes her because he always seems to be bumping her with his backpack in the hall and snorting in this high-pitched horsey kind of way.
    Now I have to hope that Cameron’s brother doesn’t joke with him about me the way I joke with Kylee about Henry Dubin.
    I can so see the scene playing itself out in my mind. Cameron’s brother sits down to dinner with Cameron and their parents in the ultra-modern-looking house where they live, a few blocks from us, the house I walk by every chance I get, always pretending I’m on the way to somewhere else.
    â€œHey, lil bro, is there a girl in your class named Summer or something?”
    â€œAutumn. There’s a girl in my journalism class named Autumn.”
    â€œThat’s right. Autumn. Well, she has a big-time crush on