Read Nobody's Perfect for Free Online

explain? I invited her to my party, but she doesn’t want to come.”
    â€œForget about her,” said Cindy.
    â€œYeah,” Megan agreed. She really didn’t want to talk about it anymore. It was spoiling her enthusiasm for her own birthday party. She ditched the invitation in a garbage can to get rid of the unhappy evidence that she had invited Alexis to her party but Alexis refused.
    â€œYou didn’t want to invite her in the first place,” said Cindy, “so it’s back to just us. The original girls. Just the way you wanted.”
    â€œYeah, you’re right,” said Megan. But she couldn’t help but feel hurt and confused by the whole thing.

4
A Second Chance
    â€œSATELLITE,” SAID CINDY.
    â€œSatellite,” Megan repeated. “S-a-t-e-l-l-i-t-e.” Megan clutched her hands under the dining room table and quickly spelled through the word with her hand, using the manual alphabet. “Satellite.” It looked something like this:

    â€œOkaaaay,” said Cindy, referring to the list of prepared study-words for the class spelling bee. “Marooned.” She articulated the word with great emphasis because Megan was reading her lips to understand the word. Sign language didn’t necessarily have a specific sign for words like “marooned” or most of the words on the spelling bee list. Cindy could interpret the meaning of marooned by signing “left behind” or “left alone” if she was translating the word in the context of a sentence. But to communicate the word “marooned” by itself, Megan had to read her lips. If Cindy had spelled it out using the manual alphabet, she would have been giving Megan the whole answer.
    â€œMarooned,” Megan repeated. “M-a-r-o-o-n-e-d. Marooned.” She finished the letters with an edge of impatience.

    â€œThese are too easy,” she protested. “Give me a tricky word.”
    Cindy was aware that Megan was under pressure, especially since the class spelling bee was scheduled for the next day. The winner from each classroom won a blue ribbon and went against the winners in the rest of the grade. Then the school winners from each grade went to compete against other schools in the county, then those winners went to compete against other schools in the state—and those winners went to the National Spelling Bee. At some point the blue ribbons turned into trophies and scholarships. “If you win the National Spelling Bee,” Ms. Endee had announced, “you can be proud for the rest of your life!” It was a very big deal.
    Cindy was also aware that Megan wanted to come home with a ribbon or maybe even a trophy even though she was only an average speller. Megan wasn’t anywhere near being the best speller in class. Still, she was determined to give the spelling bee her best shot.
    â€œHere you go,” said Cindy, referring to the list. “Cornucopia.”
    â€œCornucopia?” Megan repeated. “I don’t even know what that is.”
    â€œYes, you do,” said Cindy. “Cornucopia.”
    â€œYou’re making that word up,” said Megan. “That’s a nonsense word. That’s like ‘kabillion.’ That word doesn’t exist.”
    â€œYes, it does,” Cindy insisted. “Cornucopia is that wicker thing, the ‘horn of plenty’ pilgrims used at Thanksgiving. Remember we studied colonial days at the beginning of the year? You fill it up with little pumpkins and stuff?”
    â€œOh, yeah, I remember ‘cornucopia,’ ” said Megan, making the shape of the horn with her hands. “But I forget how you spell it.”
    â€œYou spell it like it sounds,” Cindy said before she caught herself. “Oops, sorry, that was stupid of me.”
    Megan didn’t mind. “You spell it like it sounds if you can hear it,” she said easily. She grabbed the list of spelling bee