Free Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson

for a weapon, and they’d blast away.
    I’d be the next dead boy on CNN for sure.
    By deciding to spray-paint a few harmless slogans, I actually saved hundreds of lives and countless millions in damages. But when they arrested me, I realized that people might not understand if I explained that part. I never told anyone. I thought about it from time to time, but I never told.
     
    The secretary looked up from her nails when Mr. Benson’s door opened. A woman my mom’s age hurried out.
    I followed Mr. Benson inside and took my chair. He shuffled papers on his desk and smiled his hundreds of big teeth at me. He told me that he’d had a great report from Mr. Pirelli and another nice one from Joe, the head custodian at school.
    I nodded.
    “How are your classes going?”
    “Great,” I said.
    “How’s your dad?”
    “Why, did he call you?”
    “No. It’s just that people like your father want to send their kids to summer camp, not to a probation officer. I wanted to make sure things were okay.”
    “He’s fine,” I said. “He works a lot.”
    “Well, give him my best.” He scribbled something on a piece of paper. “That’s that. Work hard at school, keep your nose clean, and come back in a month.”
     
    Again with the clean-nose thing. Authority figures had a pathological fear of boogers, that’s how I saw it.

32.
    The explosion hit us as soon as I opened the door at four thirty on Friday afternoon. Good thing I was in front. Hannah didn’t have the body mass to absorb that much punishment.
    “OhmyGodwherehaveyoubeendon’tyouknowwhattimeitisyou’renotdressed!”
    Mom was screaming so loudly she set off car alarms three streets over. She was decked out in black velvet pants, pearl earrings, a necklace of jingle bells, a sweatshirt covered with stoned-looking reindeer, and antlers.
    Reindeer.
    “Uh-oh,” Hannah whispered.
     
    There was no nice way to say it: our mom was a Christmas freak.
    Everystinkingthing about Christmas was holy. Not just the church stuff; you could understand that. But the rest of it—decorations brought down from the attic as soon as the Thanksgiving dishes were done, carols playing 24/7, candles with the choking stench of “Holiday Cheer,” cookies that were not for eating, but for “atmosphere”; it was nauseating.
    Worst of all was the stupid family photo that always went on the front of our Christmas card. Seventeen years’ worth of those pictures were lined up with military precision on the walls of the living room. In the first one, I was a month old. I looked like a deformed vegetable swaddled in a Santa suit.
     
    Hannah and I sprinted upstairs to change while Mom stomped around in the kitchen.
    “Where is your father?” she yelled again as she slammed down the receiver of the kitchen phone.
    If he was smart, on a plane to Tokyo.
    I pulled the sweatshirt over my head. “Why don’t we just Photoshop him in?”
    “Only if we can add a mustache and cross his eyes,” Hannah called from the bathroom.
    “I can hear you both,” Mom yelled up the stairs, “and you are not funny. Do you know how hard it is to get time with Davis Gunnarson?”
    I tugged at the bottom of the sweatshirt, but it stayed at the level of my belly button. I looked in the mirror hung on the back of my door. Not cool.
    “I’m not wearing this!” I shouted.
    “Wear it or die,” Mom shouted back.
    Hannah pushed my door open, almost smacking me in the face with it. “Let me—oh, snap!” She couldn’t say anything after that, because she was writhing on the ground, pointing at me, and laughing so hard she could barely breathe.
     
    Fifteen minutes after we walked in the front door, we were breaking the speed limit to get to the photography studio of Mr. Davis Gunnarson. Is there anything more embarrassing than being driven around by your mom? Yes, if you’re wearing a reindeer sweatshirt that is two sizes too small.
    “I left messages for your father on every number I have for him.”