“Tory…Tory!” Mom’s voice reached me from the kitchen. I was already on the front porch strapping on my scooter helmet.
“Tory!” she yelled again.
“What, Mom?” I called back through the screen door.
“Did you finish your breakfast?”
“Yes!” I yelled, not happily.
“All of it?” Mom’s voice was closer, just inside the door.
“Yes, Mom, all of it. Even the gross egg yolk!” I love fried eggs, but just the egg white part. The yolk is so slimy. It makes me gag.
“Okay. Good.” Mom opened the screen door and held out a brown paper bag. “You forgot your lunch.”
I sighed, and then stood up on my scooter balancing with one foot until I could get moving. “What is it?”
“PB and J,” Mom told me, “your favorite. Now turn around.”
Mom doesn’t know that sixth graders are too old to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And I didn’t want to hurt her feelings by telling her it wasn’t my favorite anymore, so I just turned around and let her stuff the lunch bag into my new fish backpack. It’s not shaped like a fish or anything, but it has these awesome looking fish all over it. I just got it for school. My best friend Kelly got the same one when we went shopping last week. Since we’re both in sixth grade this year, our moms decided we were finally old enough to go some places by ourselves. Luckily, one of those places is the mall!
“Your pills are in your lunch bag. Have a good first day of school.” Mom kissed me on the forehead, and I took off down my street to meet Kelly on her corner. I’m glad Mom thought I was old enough to go to school without her now. Imagine being the only sixth grader whose mother walked her to school! I’d be too embarrassed even to show up. Lucky for me Mom was pretty cool about stuff like that.
But why does Mom always have to remind me about eating? And those stupid pills? I hate them. Nobody else at school takes any type of medicine when they eat. Thank goodness we get to go to the bathroom before lunch. I always take my pills in there, where nobody except Kelly can see me. The only people at school who know my secret are Kelly and my teachers, and I plan to keep it that way.
Kelly was waiting for me right at the corner as we’d planned. She was scootering up and down the little thing at the curb that is made for wheelchairs. Like a ramp. From the distance, I could see Kelly’s outfit and her new scooter helmet. Both are exactly like mine, except different colors. The skirt was the kind that’s only a skirt in the front. Underneath it’s shorts. My skirt was blue, and hers was purple as usual. Purple is Kelly’s favorite color. Our shirts were identical, purple and blue stripes with the words “Here Comes Trouble” printed across the front. We got them at the mall last week, too. We giggled about how they would be fun to wear on the first day of school. After all, we want to make sure everyone knows we aren’t fifth graders anymore.
“Hey!” Kelly called as I got closer.
“Hey.” I stopped right in front of her.
“What took you so long? I’ve been here for ten minutes!” Kelly made a big show of looking at the glittery, purple watch she got on her family vacation last month, as if to prove she actually had been waiting ten minutes.
“My mom,” I explained. “She made my lunch, and wanted to make sure I’d eaten all my breakfast.” Kelly rolled her eyes. I can tell Kelly the truth about stuff. She already knows everything there is to know about me. We’ve been best friends since we were three years old.
“Well, my mom made my lunch, too. But I’m going to work on convincing her to let me buy lunch in the school cafeteria this year,” Kelly said. “Wanna race?”
Before I could even answer, Kelly took off. So I followed her.
We raced the five blocks to Keller Elementary School, with the wheels of our scooters humming over the pavement and bumping over the cracks. When we got there, we were both out of breath and plopped down on the curb in front of the main entrance to take off our helmets and fix our hair. Right away it started. I could feel it coming the moment I sat down. The coughing.