Can You Say Catastrophe Page 0,2
history.
I read this quote once that said, “The past is history. The future is a mystery. All we have is the present.” That might be true, but what I know at present is that I should have seen the signs and spent my thirteenth birthday in bed. I’m not blaming myself entirely, though. I blame my parents. I wasn’t part of the planning that went into having three daughters born in the spring and naming them all after their birth months, and I certainly didn’t ask to have a party with my sisters where we all wore matching outfits.
I hate my birthday. I know that sounds dramatic, but it’s true. I’ve been scarred for life. And I’m only thirteen.
It’s the friends you can call up at 4 A.M. that matter.
—Marlene Dietrich
Thursday, April 25, 5:35 P.M.
Just home from Billy’s house
Super fun but super weird afternoon
This afternoon at Billy’s started out really fun, but then something happened that I wasn’t expecting, and super fun turned to super weird.
Fun part first. Billy and Brynn and I went to Billy’s after school to finish our Science Fair project. (That wasn’t the fun part.) After we put everything on our display board and wrote our conclusion, we were sitting on the floor of Billy’s family room drinking lemonade and eating popcorn and mini Reese’s—our snacks of choice since third grade when the three of us vowed to always be best friends and eat the same after-school snack for the rest of our lives, or at least our school lives. That’s when the fun part happened.
Billy and Brynn and I were sitting on the floor with Billy’s mom’s iPad, looking at old photos of Billy, Brynn, and me from grade school. There were pictures of us from birthday parties, school plays, and holidays. “Aww, we were so cute!” I said, pointing to a picture from fifth grade of us all dressed like hippies on Halloween.
When Billy pulled up a picture of the three of us from Colonial Night in third grade, we all collapsed into a laughing heap. Billy was George Washington, I was Martha Washington, and Brynn was Betsy Ross. We looked so funny in our costumes. That was the night we became friends, when Brynn and I couldn’t stop laughing at Billy’s jokes about wig troubles, and we’ve been inseparable ever since. The Three Musketeers—that’s what Billy’s dad calls us.
Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do without my friends. Even though Brynn can have her moments, she’s been my best friend since kindergarten. She’s an only child, so she’s more like a sister I actually like than a friend. And Billy has kept me laughing since the day I met him.
Like today, when he did his recap of what happened to Charlie Bonner in fifth-period math. I saw it when it happened, but it was even funnier when Billy put his spin on it. First of all, no one likes Charlie because he always makes fun of other people. But today he got back everything he’s ever dished out.
Charlie hates our math teacher, Ms. Crawford, and, to be fair, with good reason. Ms. Crawford always calls on Charlie to come to the board to work out the problems no one else can figure out. So today, when she called on Charlie, he was prepared to get back at her. He had an egg in his shorts pocket and he told everyone before class he was going to crack it on Ms. Crawford’s head when she called him up to the board. I have to admit, I couldn’t wait to see him do it, but what happened was so much funnier. The egg broke in Charlie’s pocket when he was walking up to the board. There must have been a hole in his pocket, because egg was dripping down his leg as he stood in front of the class.
“The yellow part looked like petrified pee, and I won’t say what the white part looked like,” said Billy to Brynn and me.
Billy was pretending to do the problem on the board and shifting around and covering up his pants with his hands. It was a spot-on imitation of what Charlie looked like this afternoon. I laughed so hard, lemonade came out of my nose. Brynn had to run to the bathroom.
When we finally stopped laughing, Brynn brought up one of our favorite topics: camp.
“Fifty-one days till we leave!” she said.
Every year, Brynn does the countdown to Camp Silver Shores, and she’s always the one who makes