"I told you. I don't need anyone." "Everyone needs someone. Parents, for instance; everyone needs parents." "I've got no parents." "Everyone's got parents." She thought for a second. "Unless you're an orphan." "I've got work to do. So get lost." "You're not very nice." He scowled. "Just because I...
I had to read "torn away" for school and I have to admit that I didn't like it at all. The story is not very realistic (Little boys making car stunts?! Honestly?!?!), the language is very simple and neither exciting nor witty. Furthermore, the protagonist is a very plain character, not very inter...
Besides, it was cold in the sepulcher. The pain throbbed in his foot. It was the ankle of the same foot he had sprained the time he fell off the trapeze at YC, or Youth Circus. A Protestant boy named Timmy Banks is the anchor. He is holding the rope attached to Liam’s safety harness. Timmy stumbl...
He always had, right from the beginning. When Tom first started school, some of the other kids bullied him. Why? Who knows, but Tom had three possible strikes against him: he was small, he was a total nerd, and he was Japanese Canadian. There are always racists. You can’t get away from them. And ...
Police were everywhere. Police cars, motorbikes, uniformed men, plainclothesmen, inspectors, chief inspectors, superintendents, even the police chief himself. At the fitness center, Lucy Lambert wore her aerobics outfit—gray tights, midriff bare, white T-shirt. The center would be closing soon. S...
Lots of rain and wind. Benny Mason has been at school almost a week already, but he’s doing nothing. He’s like me, I guess, doesn’t like fighting, except his problem is that he doesn’t even say anything. He needs to talk back at them and hold his ground. In English, Sammy and Rebar whisper taunts...
until all the cigarettes were gone. “I meant that I’d stop as soon as the present supply ran out,” he explained to Andy. “I couldn’t leave them about the place. There will be no more after this, I promise.” In the days that followed, Andy felt stronger and, most important of all, was happy to be ...
He was whisked to Emergency at the Vancouver General. Mickey knew Joey pretty well, an eighth grader from Creekside. He was in the Cougars for a short time, a good fighter—fast with his feet. But then his dad found out and made him quit. Everyone in the gang liked Joey. Nowadays he took the bus u...