Gill Left Out (Looking for Normal, #1)

1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-386-38329-1
Verlag: The 13th Sign
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten

Reihe: Looking for Normal

B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree. Bronze Children's Books Award 2017 Readers' Favorites. Shortlisted for the Cinnamon Press Novella Award.'A compelling story about friendship, its strength, and the unusual ways it develops.' Rebecca P. McCray, The Journey of the Marked
Being different isn't easy but it can be exciting!
How well do you know your friends? Are they left-handed or right-handed? Are they left-brained or right-brained? And what difference does it make?
Shocked at discovering how left-handers are persecuted, Jamie ties her hand behind her back for a public protest in school. This does not go down well with the teachers.
Her best friend Ryan joins in but just when their campaign is working, Ryan's mother drops a bombshell. She's whisking him off from Wales UK to live back in America. There he faces bullying at its most deadly, and Jamie has to live from one email to the next, waiting to know whether her friend is hanging in there.
A modern classic of friendship and teen life, with all its pitfalls and challenges.
'As a parent and a teacher, I felt this book in my gut. It hits so close to home on more levels than I can count.' Anita Kovacevic, teacher and children's author, contributor to the international Inner Giant Anti-Bullying Project.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gill, Jean

Leseproben

Chapter 2 Ryan was less pleased to find his mother at home but it was no surprise to him. She was a political journalist so worked from home, spending much of her time writing. They had moved to Port Talbot from London, England, chasing his mother’s dream of the big story and limited by their funds as to where they could live. Before London, and when he was too young to remember, it had been Montgomery, Alabama, where Ryan was born. His mother’s precise English still held traces of a southern states’ drawl. After she called Jamie “you all”, his friend delighted in trying out the phrase for weeks, entertaining Ryan with a broad Port Talbot “yo-ew-orll” version of his mother’s relaxed “y’all”. He had tried to explain to Jamie what was wrong with his mother but, “She’s just too much” had been the best he could manage. She had opinions on everything. She would ask, “What do you think?” and then she would interrupt him, to ensure he reached the right conclusion and agreed with her. He was the result of her opinions on bringing up children. Worse than that, he was the result of her opinions on the right of a single woman to be a mother. He couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t know he’d been fathered by a sperm bank, although he could remember thinking it was like the bank they went to for money, only you got babies there. It had come as a shock to find out that other children had not been got from the bank, and he’d been lucky to move school again after that conversation. It wasn’t that he blamed his mother exactly; there were just some things he’d rather not know or talk about. Discussing everything was another of his mother’s more difficult habits, and he deeply envied the way Jamie could hide within her own home, as people came and went all round her. He felt the pressure of his mother’s attention like a TV camera and hand-held mike following him round, while a spotlight tracked him. “Hi, hon, had a good day? Learn much?” Mothers! “Good, fine, yeah.” “I thought I’d do Kentucky Fried Chicken tonight. Would you like that?” “That would be great.” His mother hated cooking and K.F.C. was treat food. What was she up to? “I’ll go do some schoolwork.” He escaped to his computer. Perhaps he’d mail Jamie or even see if she was online in the chat room? No, he’d dig up some stuff on left-handers first. It would be good for his friend to have some role models. His mother knew all the theory about role models and had bored him silly with details of sensitive, male, high achievers “just like he was going to be”. “One father would have been enough!” he’d shouted at her, one really bad time. That had led to several weeks of jolly men friends of his mother’s visiting and having man-to-man chats with him, or talking about football, in which he had no interest. He logged on, searched for ‘famous left-handers’, visited a couple of websites, and printed out some lists. He put circles around the interesting names, a few of which should leave Jamie well impressed. He went back over the names he’d circled, putting five stars by the best, until he’d got the names down to a top 10. He wanted a range of different types of famous people, and he had to make some tough choices. In the end, it came down to Bill Clinton or Jimi Hendrix, and if you had to choose between a President of the United States and a tragic rock star who set the world and his guitar on fire, there was really no contest. He supposed he should have included some of the sporting heroes like Babe Ruth, only Jamie wouldn’t have heard of the baseball player, or perhaps Jimmy Connors, but he thought tennis was boring. He made his choices and typed it up as a list to send to Jamie. Ryan’s Top 10 Famous Left-handers Albert Einstein: scientific genius who gave us the answer e=mc2. Before then, nobody knew there was a question. Napoleon Bonaparte: short Emperor of France who told his model-type tall girlfriend (another left-hander) “Not tonight Josephine”. She must have told her friends, because he then lost a few wars, and was probably poisoned by arsenic in the green wallpaper on his prison island. Ludwig van Beethoven: deaf composer of classical music who poured iced water over his head to help him think. Pity he and Hendrix didn’t get together. Michelangelo and David: Italian sculptor (Michelangelo) who took a second-hand piece of marble that some right-hander had chipped and turned it into the most famous statue in Europe: a left-handed giant-killer (David). Jimi Hendrix: tragic rock and roll star who set the world and his guitar on fire. Showed true left-handed versatility by not only re-stringing a right-handed guitar so he could play it but also by demonstrating how many parts of the body could play guitar if given the chance. Bill Gates: millionaire with chips (silicone that is.) Leonardo da Vinci: showed that writing notes backwards was actually a sign of genius, invented machines he could not have imagined and painted woman with strange smile and nagging tendencies (The Moaner, Lisa). Bart Simpson: anarchic under-achieving cartoon boy (Bart) and Max Groening: high-achieving cartoonist (Groening). Prince Charles: God save him (and Camilla). Eminem: white rapper whose lyrics are more popular with his fans than with his wife, his mother or the police. It had only taken him thirty minutes and now, perhaps, he would do some homework. He clicked Send and the email vanished into virtuality. “…so I’ve been asked to take the piece to the States for a while, and it’s such a great chance for you to get in touch with your roots. It’s where we’re from, Ryan and you’ll love Atlanta; so much life and variety. We’ll have time just to hang out together and you get to meet a whole new bunch of kids and salute the flag, sing America the beautiful, make up your own mind about the way the politicians there create national identity; such an opportunity.” Ryan’s chicken was sticking in his throat. He had been through this before, only two years earlier, when they had moved from London so that his mother could attach herself to events at the Welsh Assembly and ‘the emerging federal system in Britain’, which meant the way Britain was becoming more like the USA, with the separate states of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Her dream was to get all her articles published as one book, The United States of Britain, and to make a fortune. “How long is a while?” he asked quietly. “It all depends. I need to get some American perspective, interview some folks, make some contacts. A few months, maybe a year. Hey, I guess if y’all feel right at home, we could stay longer.” “What about school?” “Don’t you worry. They’ve got schools in the States all right; be a real experience for you.” “I’m having a real experience here.” “Don’t you go sulk on me, now. You know I have to go where the work is. No work, no pay; no pay, no Kentucky fried. I know it’s a change for you but you’ll love it, you’ll see.” “And we’ll be coming back here?” “Let’s wait and see, shall we.” Ryan put the half-eaten drumstick down on the plate amid the cooling chips and stood up to leave the table. “You haven’t eaten your meal.” “I’m not hungry.” “Ry?” He ignored her and went upstairs to his room, shifting Hendrix to the top of his list for having publicly burnt the American flag. Two hours of surfing, with a break for a rushed meal, left Jamie cursing the computer but finally grasping a list of left-handers’ names. Her first search turned up some sites which would have made a teacher blush, the safest of which was a computer-dating agency. She clicked without thinking on one site name, blinked rapidly, told the screen image, “Put ’em away, love, for God’s sake,” and moved on. After that, she deleted the word ‘good-looking’ from the search but still collected thousands of sites that seemed to have been selected at random, with no relationship to her search. She deleted words and tried again until she just searched for ‘left-handed’ and was a little more successful, although she still had a collection of odd information on supernatural powers and mystic healing mixed in with some more useful facts about being left-handed. She sighed. What a waste of time. Ryan had encouraged her to use the internet, telling her “the Truth was out there”. So were dustbinfuls of rubbish. She was about to log off and browse the lists, which she had printed, when an email arrived. “Thanks a lot!” she told the cheerful message from Ryan. “Great timing.” She printed off his list but doggedly read the fruits of her own research before she looked at his. When she read his Top 10, she was angry enough to sit down and work out her own. Luckily, Gareth had gone off with his friends so she was free to write. Jamie’s Top 10 Left-handers Queen Victoria: a working mother who ruled Britain when it was Great, had 11 children and was a legendary diary writer before Adrian Mole or Bridget Jones. Queen Elizabeth II: ditto, with diminished Greatness, fewer children and no diary. Celine Dion: romantic Canadian singer who topped the charts with albums in both French and English and whose heart goes on... and on, when the Titanic goes down. Whoopi Goldberg: actress who is known for how good she...