Free Vacations From Hell by Claudia Gray, Cassandra Clare, Maureen Johnson, Libba Bray, Sarah Mlynowski

doesn’t mean a guy like that isn’t out there.
    At least her summer vacation wasn’t entirely ruined. Cecily had a few days left to enjoy herself, which she felt she richly deserved.
    SELF-IMPROVEMENT GOALS: REVISED
    During my remaining vacation time I will:
resist gloating over Kathleen’s downfall, at least while there are witnesses around
swim for at least two hours a day
see if the moms now respect me enough to teach me some serious Craft mojo
beat Theo at foosball just once for the sake of my personal dignity
walk three miles on the beach each morning
see about tennis lessons
see about horseback riding lessons
basically, stay outdoors as much as humanly possible
    Then thunder rolled in the distance, and raindrops began to spatter onto the sand.
    Cecily groaned as she ran for shelter. Well, maybe next year.

 
    “I hate vacation,” I said.
    My sister, Marylou, was in the rocking chair by the window, twisting her short, rust-colored hair around her finger absently, her DSM-IV open in front of her. The DSM-IV , in case you’ve never heard of it, is The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders (Fourth Edition) . Marylou had just finished her first year as a psychology major, which meant that her favorite time waster was diagnosing me with every ailment in the book—literally. So it was a mistake saying this kind of thing to her.
    “Lack of interest in things normal people find enjoyable,” she said. “That’s depression, Charlie.”
    “‘Normal people’?” I repeated.
    “Well, that’s not the term we like to use, actually….”she said, even though she had just used it.
    “Who is this we ?”
    “Mental health professionals.”
    The last thing Marylou was was a mental health professional. She was a barista with two semesters of intro psych under her belt.
    “I see,” I said. “A mental health professional. You also serve lattes. So are you also the president of Starbucks? Is that what that means?”
    “Shut up, Charlie.”
    Page flip, page flip, page flip.
    “And why are you so busy trying to diagnose me ?” I asked, swatting away a fly that kept trying to land on my nose. “You were reading that on the plane when that guy next to me tried to stab me with his fork. You didn’t give him a label.”
    “That’s because he didn’t try to stab you,” she said placidly. “You were lying.”
    See, this is something that haunts me. I used to lie a lot. Or, I exaggerated a lot. I guess I was bored, and my little embellishments made the world so much more interesting. I have to say, I was really good at it. I could fool anyone. They were harmless lies too. I didn’t hurt anyone with them. The little dog that chased me down the street could be bigger, perhaps rabid. I didn’t just drop my ice cream while it was windy—I was hit by a freak tornado.
    But lying is bad. I know this. And even though my lies weren’t evil, they still caused all kinds of problems and made some people not trust me, so I gave it up, cold turkey, at the start of freshman year. I’ve been on the wagon for about three years now.
    But do I get any credit for this? No. I guess it’s like having a criminal past: no one ever really trusts you again. Like, if you were a robber, and you stopped robbing and totally re-created yourself and everyone knew it…still, no one will let you carry the big cash deposit to the bank.
    And the guy in seat 56E really did try to stab me with his fork. I think this was because he thought I stole his Air France headphones while he was napping, which I didn’t. The stewardess didn’t give him any because he was sleeping. Marylou and I just used our own headphones on the flight, and she ended up sticking her Air France pair in my seatback pocket when she got up to go to the bathroom, so when Mr. 56E snorted himself awake halfway over the Atlantic, he stared at the two pairs of headphones I had in front of me. His mouth said nothing, but his eyes said, “Thief.” When his tray