16 Reasons My Life Sucks - Sara Walker (100 best novels of all time txt) 📗

been a screw up in scheduling and somehow the geniuses that run these
schools stuck me in her class. Kids used to ask me personal questions about
her so that they could make fun of her during school.
Kids are so immature.
But, I wouldn’t tell them anything. Except when I was grounded by my
mom for staying out too late with Beth at the movies. She was really pissed about it, and so was I. So, I told all the kids that my mom wasn’t actually a
teacher and we were on the run from the police for murdering our landlords.
And they believed me. I was in even MORE trouble then.
Anyway, I checked inside the garage, making sure she wasn’t trying to
kill herself by car fumes or something (not that she was suicidal or anything).
It was empty, I’m glad to report.
I slammed open the door, threw my back pack on the couch and flopped
down on the recliner. It would be another ten minutes before Erica got dropped
off by her friends, you know, the other beautiful-smart-actress types. Ugh,
why me?
I flipped on Video IQ and drowned out my misery with the soothing
combination of music videos and those word play things, I don’t know what
they’re called. The phone rang, and I ignored it. It rang again and again I
ignored it. On the fourth time I picked it up.
“Hello?” came an ancient voice over the phone.
“Grandma Reynolds?” Great. Just who I needed to talk to, my grandma.
“Katie dear?”
“Um, yeah Grandma?”
“Oh, Katie! I haven’t spoken to you in forever!” Uh huh, Grandma. That’s
because you’re senile and smell weird.
“Yeah, Grandma. Sure.”
“Oh, Katie! How old are you? Fourteen, fifteen?”
“Sixteen, last September.”
“Oh, well. You two girls grow up so fast!” Uh, was there a point to this
call?
“Did you want to talk to my mom?” I held my breath, hoping for the
affirmative.
“Did I send you a birthday card, dear?”
“Yeah, Grandma. It had five dollars in it.” How cheap can you get? Yeah,
okay, you’re on social security, but who else are you going to spend on?
You’re cat?
“Oh, that’s nice, sweetie.” AHHHHHH!
“Grandma, did you call for my mother?”
“What? Call who?”
“Grandma, why did you call?” OLD PEOPLE!!!
“Oh. I don’t know. It was nice to talk to you Erica.”
“I’m Kate, Grandma!” But she already hung up.
I banged my head against the table next to the chair I was in and sat back
up (did you know that banging your head against something for an hour burns
one hundred and fifty calories?).
Why is my family so weird? And why is it my mom’s mom, the SANE
one, died and I’m left with my dad’s mom?
That thought brought back some memories, none that I could really
remember that well.
My dad died when I was like four, and I really don’t remember him that
well. Erica, two years older than me but only a grade apart, says she
remembers him. I think she’s full of it.
He had been a head manager at a local restaurant called Barley’s. It was a
casual dining restaurant and we got to eat free there. The food wasn’t bad and
everyone that worked there was like an extended family.
The restaurant itself had paintings all around, hanging on the walls, and
there was this one that was painted of our whole family (Dad, Mom, Erica and
me). One of the very few memories I actually have of my dad is sitting next to
him, in one of the booths, while some waiter hung the painting. I remember
that I hated the painting because I thought the artist had squished my face. I
was crying about it.
My dad got me an ice cream sundae and told me he thought I was
beautiful. Yeah. Right.
Well, my dad had a heart attack and died (not at the restaurant; it
happened a few months after). I can’t even remember what he looks like.
Except for the painting.
When my dad died Barley’s closed down, and the employees gave us the
painting. It was hanging on the wall adjacent to the T.V.
The memory of my dad made me instantly look over at the painting
hanging on the wall. There was my dad, Erica, me and….Damn it! I forgot to
check out about my mother.
It was then that my sister flung open the front door with this freaky
dramatic gesture.
“Erica Reynolds has entered the building,” I announced sarcastically.
“Shut up, freak.” Erica daintily hung her jacket on the coat rack and put
her backpack on the floor, out of the way. “God, I’m hungry.”
“Maybe if you stop sticking your finger down your throat you wouldn’t be
so hungry.”
“I’m sorry, KATHLEEN. But I am not bulimic.”
“Could have fooled me.” A pillow was flung at my head. “You missed!”
I could hear Erica walk gracefully towards the kitchen. I turned my
attentions back to the T.V. The greatest band ever, Green Day, was on and I
snuggled up, singing along with it. It wasn’t until the very end of the video
that I heard the huge wail.
I looked up in the direction of the kitchen. Did Erica just realize peanut
butter has fat? That’d make my day.
The wail came again and I, reluctantly, headed towards the kitchen. I saw
my mother and sister hugging each other, crying. I had the sudden urge to
leave and vomit, but my mother called me back as I began to walk away.
“Oh, Kathleen! Oh!” She was using my full name. Either she found about
my act of vandalism against the school dumpster or she ran over a dog. I didn’t
feel like listening about either. “Kate, I lost my job!”
“What? Mom, you have tenure!”
Erica hugged my mother tighter. “Don’t worry, Mom. You’ll find
something. A smart woman like you must be able to find a job somewhere!”
“I’m not so sure, sweetheart.” My mother grabbed for a tissue from the
box on the counter.
“Um, hello. Tenure.” I pulled out a chair and plopped down.
“Mom, you can’t lose your job now! What about Yale?”
“Aren’t you getting a scholarship?” Erica shot me a death stare. I turned
back to my mom. “And please explain tenure to me again. Because I thought
that once you GOT tenure, you couldn’t lose your job.”
My mother blew her nose and looked at me. “All the non-tenured teachers
have already been laid off. I was the newest tenured teacher. So they cut me,
too.”
“What, did like half of the school die and they don’t need teachers
anymore?”
“They just don’t have it in the budget, Katie,” she said, wiping a tear from
her eye with a tissue.
I felt my head fall down and I sighed heavily. This sucked. “So, what are
you going to do?”
“Well…” she started, but Erica cut her off.
“Why not look for another teaching job over at Fillmore? They seem to
always be hiring someone.”
“Would you let the woman finish?” I complained.
“Don’t you have a rock to crawl under?” she retorted, with a suddenly
stern look.
“Girls!” She huffed and closed her eyes. She only does this when she’s
tired or angry with us. I guessed it was a little bit of both. “Like I was saying,
the school has offered some of the laid off teachers a job.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like a bus driver.”
Silence.
More silence.
“Say something!” my mother demanded.
“Well sorry. What do you want me to say? You’re going to be a bus
driver!”
“Give her a break, Kate. She just got laid off!”
“Well, I didn’t hear you saying anything.”
“Alright! I won’t be a bus driver.” She stood and walked over to the
fridge, grabbing a bottle of water. “There IS a teaching job I’ve been offered.”
This made Erica sit up straighter. “A teaching job? Where?”
I glanced over at my mom. She turned around and looked at us. “Well,
it’s kind of in…Idaho.”
Erica’s jaw dropped. I think mine may have dropped farther. “Idaho? Are
you psychotic? There are like five people and a million cows in Idaho! That is
the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard!”
I was so close to being grounded it wasn’t even funny (okay, I was just
using that phrase. It was freaking hilarious). At least we were staying here, and
she’s going to be a….a….bus driver.
“Who do you think is hotter? Dr. Carter or…Dr. Kovac?” Beth asked,
sitting on her bed holding the remote. I was relaxing in her bean bag chair.
Thursday was always a night that I spent over at Beth’s house. We were
devout E.R. fans, and have been since we laid eyes on Dr. Malucci (who was
kicked off the show when we were in the eighth grade. That blew).
But now it was more of a hanging out time than watching E.R. time.
“Carter.”
“How could you choose Carter over Kovac? Kovac’s got the looks,
accent, everything you need!” Beth rolled over so she was lying on her bed
backwards. The station was at commercial, so we could talk.
“Why did you bother asking then?”
She sighed and rolled so she was on her stomach, propping her head up
with her hands. “I was kind of hoping for an explanation to accompany the
answer.”
“Well, next time be more specific. Okay, you want to know why I like
Carter more?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Alright, he’s hotter in my opinion,” a “Whatever” came from Beth. “He’s
sweet. But he can also be a jerk, and I like a guy like that.”
“You like jerks?”
“Well, not a COMPLETE jerk, but a sensitive jerk. I think I’d get sick if I
spent the rest of my life with a guy who always agreed with me and did
everything I wanted.”
“Sounds perfect to me…” she trailed off and grabbed some popcorn from
the bowl she had made. She turned back to me and gave me a funny look. “Do
you realize you just described Matt Schroeder?”
Um, EXCUSE me? “Like hell I did! I was talking about Dr. Carter!”
Beth sucked in a breath. “Kate loves Matt! Kate loves Matt!”
I straightened in the bean bag. “What are you? Eight?”
“KATE LOVES MATT!” she sung out, louder enough for the entire house to hear.
I grabbed a pillow from her bed and threw it at her. She threw it back, and
a pillow fight was started (she was winning).
We knocked over her picture frames on her desk, half of the blankets on
her bed and the remote before her little brother Trevor walked in.
“What the hell?” Her brother was as much a teenager as I was.
“Trev! I need your help!” I called to him, hoping he’d join my fight
against Beth.
But instead he snorted at us, nodded his head a little and muttered,
“Girls.”
He left, and by doing so ruined the moment.
We fixed the pillows and rearranged her picture frames. Most of them
were of her and me, you know, in those photo booths and stuff like that. She
was one of the very rare people that I allowed to have a photo of me. The
others include: my mom, my grandmother and Matt.
No, I didn’t give him one. He stole one from me.
We were in homeroom in tenth grade. Our pictures were passed out in
those cheap envelopes that they come in. Beth and I exchanged pictures, which
we did every year.
Matt asked me for one (because he will stop at NOTHING to piss me off).
I told him to shut up and leave me alone, and then put the envelope back in my
backpack. Instead of following my orders, he walked by my desk and grabbed
my back pack.
“Matt!” I yelled,