Free Jack Adrift by Jack Gantos Page B

like some love-starved puppy dreaming about a bone. As you get older you are supposed to get more mature, not less mature. That’s why I want you to read some books with mature young men in them.”
    â€œBut I admire you …”
    â€œOh, stop it,” she said impatiently, and waved her hand in front of my face. “Move on. You’re a great kid. Now go pick on someone your own age. There are a lot of nice girls in class you can befriend.”
    â€œThere’s no one like you,” I said, my voice melting away.
    â€œYou need a hobby,” she suggested. “Do you have a pet?”
    â€œNo,” I replied. “Just a younger brother.”
    â€œThat doesn’t count,” she said. “You need something to take care of. Something you can smother with affection—and I don’t mean a stuffed animal.”

    There was only one thing I wanted to smother with affection. I gave Miss Noelle my smitten look, with my head tilted to one side, and my eyelids half closed. I breathed deeply through my mouth.
    â€œGo home,” she ordered. “Before I give you extra homework.”
    That snapped me out of it.
    I went home and felt totally defeated. Nothing was working out for me. I went out to the swamp and sat on a wet rock. Each time a mosquito landed on my arm, I smacked it as hard as I could. “You can’t fall in love with your teacher,” I said to myself. Smack! “You just have to do exactly what she tells you to do.” Smack! “Grow up, get a mature-boy book and become the character.” Smack! But what book?
    And then a living book came waddling by. A mother duck was crossing the road with a long line of ducklings behind her. “Look,” I said to no one. “It’s Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack from Make Way for Ducklings .” I remembered all their names because it wasn’t too long ago that I had been reading that book a lot. I really loved it. Now I never touched it because I thought it was a baby book.
    I looked back at the ducks as if they had the answer when I noticed there was something wrong with the last little duck. Quack kept flapping his wings and trying to
catch up, but he’d just fall forward onto his beak, then flap his wings until he got upright, take a few more steps, and land on his beak again.
    â€œOuch,” I said after he had fallen face first about ten times in a row, “that must hurt.” I went over to him to see what was wrong, and when I looked at him close up I saw that his feet were on backward. The tips of his webbed feet were facing his tail, and his heels were facing his chin. He toppled forward again and just lay there, defeated. I waited for his mom to turn around and help him out but she kept walking and his brothers and sisters followed her, so I picked him up. He was just like me—defeated. I might have been able to accept it in myself, but I couldn’t let it happen to a baby duck. I took him into my room and got a box and some dried-up sea grass to make a soft bed. I gave him bits of bread and he ate. Quack was cute, but I just couldn’t take my eyes off the backward feet.
    That night at the dinner table Dad asked, “Has anyone seen my copy of Kon-Tiki? I have ten pages left and want to know if that boat sank or reached land.”
    I knew I had to change the subject. “You won’t believe what I found,” I announced to Betsy. “A freak of nature.”
    â€œThat was just you looking into a mirror,” she said.
    â€œNo,” I said. “I found a duck with backward feet.”

    â€œI don’t believe you,” she said flatly.
    Everyone else looked suspicious. I jumped up and retrieved Quack from my room.
    â€œBut what can we do to help him?” I asked. I set him on the table and he toppled forward, beak first into the butter dish. “His own mother left him behind.”
    Mom picked him up and began to