Read Shutout for Free Online Page A

about five minutes, “do you think we could watch something else, or are you actually into that hunting knife show on the home shopping channel?”
    I looked at the TV and some guy was holding up a big knife while an 800 number flashed on the bottom of the screen. “I don’t care. You wanna watch something?” I handed Mom the remote.
    â€œNah.” She turned the TV off. “Everything all set for tomorrow?”
    Is everything all set? Nothing is set at all. Lena and I will be in separate homerooms and get separate schedules and I’m going to lose my best friend and my favorite sport and my life will be over.
    â€œYep!” I chirped. “I guess it is!”
    Mom took a long look at me. Finally she said, “Okay,” but she didn’t sound convinced.

7
    I don’t remember my mom dying or anything, but I do kind of remember the time after she died and before Dad met Mom, just weird little snapshot memories of Dad crying hysterically and me getting freaked out because I was a little kid and crying hysterically was
my
job.
    The one way in which Dad is right about the whole thing affecting me is that I never ever think, “Well, it can’t get much worse.” It can always get worse. It can get so much worse that somebody ends up dead.
    So, knowing that, I wasn’t too surprised when, on the first day of school, it got worse.
    Dad wanted to take me to school, but fortunately Mom told him what I would have told him, which was that school was only a couple of blocks away, I could certainly walk there like Conrad did, and I had been going to the high school for soccer practice every day for the last two weeks.
    Dad, unable to embarrass me in public, tried his best toembarrass me in private. He gave me this big hug and held it too long, like I was going away for the year or something.
    â€œDad,” I said, “you know, I am going to be back this afternoon after soccer practice.”
    â€œI know,” he said. “Just give me a second here.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œThis is a hard time for everybody,” he whispered, “but remember—”
    â€œI know, I know, tough as an old boot. I got it,” I finished, and he laughed.
    â€œDamn right. Now get the hell out of here.”
    Dad is so weird. Still, I guess in the end it’s better to have this kind of dad than one of those guys who’s always at work and figures he can’t be in the same room as his daughter as soon as she starts wearing bras. Like Lena’s dad, for example.
    I got to school, and there were like a million kids there, and everybody was doing the hugging and squealing and oh-my-God-your-hair-looks-amazing-ing. Well, the girls were doing that. The guys were doing the arm-punching, shoulder-bumping, and “sup”-ing. Where was Lena?
    I whipped out my phone to text her. There was no way I’d be able to hear her with all the squealing and “sup”-ing going on around me. “Where R U?” I sent.
    â€œBtwn the Lions,” she sent back, and I smiled. That was our favorite show when we met in the third grade. I headed for the steps that were guarded by the big stone lions, looking for Lena but having a hard time picking her out in the flood of humanity that was washing over the steps.
    â€œNice toothpicks!” I heard a guy say. I had almost convincedmyself that this was not some jerk talking about my legs when I heard the same voice go “Oof! What the hell?” and then I heard Conrad’s voice go “Say something else about my sister, asshole.”
    So I was actually being mocked for my freakish body on the first day of school. Fantastic. The fact that Conrad had stood up for me was nice, but it would have actually been nicer if he didn’t have to. Oh well.
    Finally I spotted Lena, an island of sanity in this horrible sea of people. Two really tall and really cute guys were talking to her, and she was doing this giggly