Free The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls by Julie Schumacher

gesturing to the laptop, which CeeCee stowed in her bag.
    “Why not?” she asked. “Teachers love PowerPoint and stuff like that. It’s a ‘creative option.’ ”
    I could already picture CeeCee getting her project back with Ms. Radcliffe’s comments: A+ Very inventive! “I still think you should read the books,” I said.
    “Let’s be honest, A.” CeeCee checked her reflection in a silver mirror. “What is a book about a talking monster going to tell me?”
    I hadn’t finished Frankenstein yet, so I wasn’t sure. Closing my eyes, I pictured Helen Keller and Frankenstein’s monster and the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” standing together on a riverbank, shouting and gesturing in an effort to convey an important message.
    “We’re going in the water in ten minutes,” CeeCee announced.
    A ninth grader shouted her name and did a flip off the diving board; she completely ignored him. “Next time we go out, you’ll sleep at my house,” she said. “Then we won’t have to worry about your getting locked out. Or about a curfew.”
    “You don’t have a curfew?” I asked.
    “Not really. Not one that anyone remembers.”
    I put my book down. “I can sleep over,” I said. “But let’s not drive around in the middle of the night. I’m not sure that’s me.”
    “Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t,” CeeCee said. “You should figure that out.”

6. SUBPLOT: This is sort of like the plot’s younger brother, the one who tags along behind the big kids who are hogging the toys and having most of the fun. But mostly it means a less important plot .
    W ould my mother lie to me about my father? I didn’t think so. Of course, I sometimes lied or hid things from her—but that was different. The only reason I could imagine her lying to me would be if she was hoping to protect me. For example, maybe she wouldn’t want to tell me the truth about my father if he was in prison. I pictured a bearded man showing up at my bedroom window wearing a jumpsuit and handcuffs. Or maybe she would lie to me if it turned out that my father was dying, and he had written to her, trying to find me, because he needed me to donate a kidney or some extra skin or a lung.
    “I’ve been thinking,” my mother said as she dropped a laundry basket full of clothes at my feet, “that you might want to come to the office with me and work as an intern.”
    “Hnn,” I said. I was poking around online, imagining my would-be second parent living out of a shopping cart under a bridge. Once he knew where I lived he would want to share custody. I would have to spend my Thanksgivings with him, chewing on turkey bones in a Dumpster.
    “Adrienne?” my mother asked.
    “What? You hate it when I go to work with you,” I said. My mother occasionally brought me to work when I was sick or had a day off from school, and the experience usually didn’t end well, because I either broke the paper shredder or copied my face with the copy machine.
    “I don’t hate it,” my mother said. But I could tell she was searching her memory and coming up with something she didn’t like. “How about helping me fold these clothes?”
    “Okay. In a minute.” Without even looking for it, I had just stumbled across a site that offered tips on how to find missing parents. Most of the information was for people like Jill, who had been given up for adoption. But no matter what my situation, the site advised, I should consider hiring an attorney. And I would need a copy of my birth certificate (did it really matter that I was under eighteen?) before I started my search. Or maybe quest was the right word.
    I propped my foot on the rim of the laundry basket. “Do we keep my birth certificate around here somewhere?”
    “Your birth certificate?” My mother bent down to pick up a sock. “I sent off a copy when you signed up for camp,” she said. “The original is in the safe deposit box at the bank.”
    “Why do we keep it at the bank?” I asked.
    “Why do