Read The Yggyssey for Free Online Page A

bread than pie, and it has tomatoes, and cheese! It's served hot. It tastes great! It is, without any doubt, the greatest food ever invented, and I predict it is going to be insanely popular.
    "It comes from Italy, and our full-time live-in chef comes from Italy, so he knows how to make it," Mary Margaret said.
    We had two pizza pies. One had mushrooms in addition to the cheese and tomato sauce, and one had little slices of spicy sausage. Best thing I ever ate.

CHAPTER 18

Who We Like, and Who We Don't
    The next sleepover treat was swimming in the Finklesteins' heated indoor and outdoor swimming pool. This pool is part inside the house, and there's a glass wall at one end, like a huge window, that comes down to within a couple of feet of the water, and the pool connects to another, bigger, part of the pool that's outdoors. There are underwater lights, and at night the whole thing glows. We had to wait a half-hour after our pizza before we could swim, and during this time we sat around the indoor part of the pool, wearing bathing suits supplied by the Finklesteins, and talked.
    "Let's talk about who we don't like at school," Mary Margaret Finklestein said.
    Here we go,
I thought. I was starting to feel very maladjusted—and proud of it. Mary Margaret, Meg, and Peggy counted off a bunch of kids they regarded as dopes, drips, and idiots. Madge, from the bullfighting school, did not know these kids because she didn't go to Harmonious Reality, but she agreed that they sounded like dopes, drips, and idiots. Giggle, giggle, squeal, titter. I was a guest, and had eaten Mary Margaret Finklestein's pizza pie, so I said nothing. The conversation turned to who they did like—all of these were boys. They rated which boys at our school were the cutest, and who they would choose for a boyfriend. Plenty of giggling. This was getting intolerable.
    So I said something. "I have a boyfriend," I said.

CHAPTER 19

Center of Attention
    I knew that would get them. Well, I didn't know in advance, because I just said it, blurted it out. But telling these goofy, giggly, gossipy rich girls I had an actual boyfriend got their attention in a big way. First, none of them had reached the boyfriend stage yet, or even had talked to a boy in a nonidiotic way, and second, I was present as somebody's good deed and wasn't expected to even speak at this sleepover.
    I had noticed during the pizza that, while not actually ignoring me—they did smile at me pleasantly—the other girls did not address me directly, or seem to find anything wrong with the fact that I hadn't said a single word after hello. I was sure Mary Margaret Finklestein had been put up to inviting me—and my mother's hand was in this—she was probably friends with someone in the family, or maybe did psychiatry on them. I was there to help me get socialized. Thus, when I said I had a boyfriend, the effect was dynamic, because it was the first sentence I had spoken, and also because it was about something they were all interested in.
    "You have a boyfriend?" Mary Margaret, Meg, Peggy, and Madge asked.
    "Yep," I said.
    "Really?"
    "Yep."
    "Who is he? What is he like?" they wanted to know. "Oh, look!" I said. "It's been a half-hour." And I dived into the pool.
    I swam laps for a while. The other girls splashed around. And giggled and squealed.
    When I got out of the water, Mary Margaret Finklestein asked me right away, "You don't really have a boyfriend, do you?"
    "Sure do," I said.
    "So, what's his name?"
    "They call him ... Bruce Bunyip," I said. Now it was their turn to surprise me. They knew who he was! Anyway, Meg and Peggy did.
    "Bruce Bunyip! Bruce Bunyip is your boyfriend?"
    "Yep. He's my sweetie-pie," I said.
    "Bruce Bunyip? Bruce Bunyip?" Meg and Peggy were all excited.
    "Who is Bruce Bunyip?" Mary Margaret and Madge wanted to know.
    "He's bad!" Meg and Peggy told them. "He's practically a juvenile delinquent!"
    This was working out better than I could have hoped. "His