Munmun(56)

Dawn was the maddest, “Warner it goes without saying that this is unacceptable but what is more troubling is your casual attitude which makes it crystalclear that you do not have any sense of why we have set what we feel are completely reasonable requirements,” et set set setera, meanwhile, Hue was the saddest, “Because the opportunity we provide is rare and special we can only provide it to those who will make the absolute best use of it, it would be very painfull to say goodbye to you but not as painfull as knowing there are poorkids outthere who would not waste this opportunity goofing off and doing drugs,” et set set, meanwhile actually Kitty was the saddest, “Warner did you do this because you think you are worthless, when I look at you I see someone with unlimited potenchill, I know the road is hard but you can be someone amazing, why can’t you just believe in yourself like I believe in you,” et set, et set, meanwhile actually exhausted Prayer was both saddest and maddest, “Kitty it’s jail, jail messed him up and beat the hope out of him, before jail you should have seen how spunky and sparky he was, now he dreams small and bad and can’t imagine great futures for himself, Warner ohmygod I can’t even look at you, I am killing myself everyday over here and you are goofing off like an idiot, if you screw this up for me I will never forgive you.”

Grumpy anger flooded me a little, you maniacs, I missed one familydinner and that’s it, just wanted to be a standard middlekid for a day, can we please not act like I went insane and murdered eighty grandmas.

But what can you do except play the game, I bowed my head and sorrowed.

“Family, I screwed up bad, but only now do I know how bad, truly,” I told them, “it won’t happen everagain, two strikes I’m out.”

Tony found me in the hall.

“I thought about your mistakes and here’s where I think you messed up, your originalsin was, you were not being considerate,” he explained. “Because you see it’s not just you sacrificing, familydinner is a sacrifice for all of us, thinkaboutit, dinners are prime social realestate. Dad could be meeting constituents, Mom could be wooing clients, I could be consolidating classmate support for my schoolvicepresident run in the fall with targeted pizzanights.”

“Thanks, Tony,” I said.

Kitty found me in the hall after Tony.

“Sorry for freaking out, it’ll be okay, don’t worry,” she soothed, crouching over me, hoping to sound casual and not shakysad.

“I promise though, I’ll never do that again,” I swore.

“So who were you with anyway,” she asked.

“Just normal kids from school,” I said. “I mean obviously badinfluence randos I will immediately eject from my life.”

“Only if that’s what you want, seriously,” she said.

“It wasn’t even fun,” I lied.

“You know you can tell me if it was a girl,” she said suddenly. I looked up into her big pretty eyeblacks.

“No no,” I lied. “I mean, it was boys and girls mixed, big group of losers, but not like a girl.”

“Okay,” she shrugged.

My dreams were wild that night for the first time since before jail, must have been the drugs. I built endless lifty gyms out of the palaces of Wet Almanac, lift this car, climb that flippedup lawn, unflood these homes and clear that rubble, kliegs and broadways lit the sky like right this way and step right up, the floodplain shrank to a trampoline to help poors dream themselves up to me, Eaters were somersaulting up joyously into the dreams of Wets, hurling and wrestling, paddling and cramming, beneath our feet the soil was swimming and boiling with extra dreamstuff, like I had nine dreaming minds and eight were out of my control.

Evenings went by of studying and stressing, things went backtonormal, everyone pretended like my druggy rampage never happened. I doubledowned on studying with Markfive, drowned myself in math, at familydinner Hue and Dawn warmly praised my dedication, Warner you’re really turning it around.

Then outofnowhere another defeat walloped the team of Poor Bro And Sis.

Prayer failed out of Wet Almanac Middlerich completely, I came home one afternoon to find a grim sis on the steps.

But it was outofsomewhere afterall, tobehonest Prayer had known for weeks she was failing. Because her plan of Make Business Presentations In Place Of Every Assignment Or Test was just a random desperate strategy, no teacher asked her to do it or thought it was a good idea.

Inotherwords she had gone completely renegade and was just getting up there everyday with panicky cheerfullness and teaching homemade casestudies to a giggly class and snarkysmile teacher, wow, yikes, okay well Prayer what you’ve told us about Shaky Buzz’s journey into the fruitmash sector is forsure quite intresting but I am afraid it is not going to get you a passing grade in Terror History.

So Wet Almanac spat my scrappy sis out into the mouth of Eat Votech.

It wasn’t all badnews because guess who talked her way into Busy Track.

“Prayer, holy crap, I’m proud of you,” I cheered her on the bus.

“Ohgod, what are you talking about, in one month I failed out of two different schoolyears, ontop of that I still don’t know enough math to place into Mathy,” she moped. “I spent a year doing shopmath, weeks at middlerich school memorizing stupid theorymath, wasn’t even close to enough.”

“Busy Track’s going to be a good home for you atleast,” I hoped.