Susan Pfeffer - Life As We Knew It

I’m 16 years old. Let me get my learner’s permit first. Then I’ll worry about lifetime commitments.

I went to bed in a bad mood and today everything just went worse.

At lunch today, Megan told Sammi she was going to go to hell if she didn’t repent soon and Sammi got real mad (I don’t blame her) and yelled at Megan that she was a very spiritual person and didn’t need any lessons from Megan about what God wanted because she knew God wanted her to be happy and if God hadn’t wanted people to have sex He’d have made everybody amoebas.

I thought that was pretty funny, but Megan didn’t and the two of them really went at it.

I can’t remember the last time the three of us had lunch together and enjoyed ourselves. When Becky was still healthy the four of us did everything together, and then after Becky got sick, we grew even closer. Megan or Sammi or I visited Becky at home or at the hospital almost every day, and called or e-mailed the others to say how Becky was doing. I don’t think I could have made it through Becky’s funeral without them. But ever since then Sammi and Megan both changed. Sammi started dating all kinds of guys and Megan got involved with her church. They’ve both changed so much over the past year and I seem to be staying who I always was.

Here I am going into my junior year of high school and these are supposed to be the best years of my life and I’m just stuck.

But the real reason why I’m in a bad mood is because I got into a big fight with Mom.

It started after supper. Jonny had gone into his room to finish his homework and Mom and I were loading the dishwasher, and Mom told me she and Dr. Elliott were going out for dinner tomorrow night.

There was this quick moment when I was jealous of Mom because even she has a social life, but it passed pretty fast. I like Dr. Elliott and Mom hasn’t been involved with anybody in a while. Besides, it’s always smart to ask favors of Mom when she’s in a good mood. So I did.

“Mom, can I take skating lessons?”

“Just for the summer?” she asked.

“And next year, too,” I said. “If I feel like continuing.”

“After your ankle healed, you said you didn’t want to skate again,” Mom said.

“The doctor said I shouldn’t even try jumping for three months,” I said. “And by then there wasn’t any point competing. So I stopped. But now I’d like to skate just for fun. I thought you like it that I do sports.”

“I do like it,” Mom said, but the way she slammed the dishwasher closed let me know she didn’t like it nearly as much as I thought she did. “But you have swimming and you were planning on trying out for the volleyball team in the fall. You can’t handle three sports. Two’s probably a stretch, especially if you want to work on the school paper.”

“So I’ll skate instead of volleyball,” I said. “Mom, I know my limitations. But I loved skating. I don’t understand why you don’t want me to.”

“If I thought the only reason was because you loved it, then we’d talk about it,” Mom said. “But skating lessons are very expensive and I can’t help thinking you only want them so you can gossip about Brandon Erlich on the message boards.”

“Mom, Brandon doesn’t even skate here anymore!” I cried. “He trains in California now.”

“But his parents still live here,” Mom said. “And you’d want to be coached by Mrs. Daley.”

“I don’t know if she’d even take me on,” I said. “It’s about the money, isn’t it? There’s money to send Jonny to baseball camp this summer, but not enough money for me to have skating lessons.”

Mom turned 15 shades of red and then we really went at it. Mom yelled at me about money and responsibilities and I yelled at her about favorites and not loving me like she loves Matt and Jonny (which I know isn’t true, but Mom wasn’t right about me not understanding about money and responsibilities) and we got so loud Jonny left his bedroom to see what was going on.

Mom came into my room about an hour later and we both apologized. Mom said she’d think about the skating lessons. She said she thought volleyball would be better on my college applications since I could join a college squad if I was good enough.

She didn’t say I’d never be good enough at swimming for a college squad, which was actually kind of nice of her. I’m never going to be good enough for anything the way things are going.

And I don’t much like either of my two best friends these days.

All that and a math test tomorrow I can’t even pretend I studied enough for.

I wish I was in college already. I don’t see how I can make it through the next two weeks, let alone two more years of high school.

Friday the 13th. Well, things weren’t that bad.

The math test wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.

Mom said if I wanted, I could take skating lessons in July. August I’ll be spending with Dad, anyway. Then if I want to continue, we’ll talk about it again.

Megan had lunch with her church friends (I don’t like any of them) and Sammi had lunch with this week’s boyfriend, so I ended up eating with some of the swim team, which was a lot more fun than listening to Megan and Sammi yell about God. Dan, who’ll be captain next year, told me I had a really good crawl stroke and that if I worked at it, he could see me anchoring relays as soon as next season.

And I like Peter (he told Jonny and me to call him that; said Dr. Elliott was his name at the office). Some of the guys Mom’s dated have tried too hard with us, but Peter seemed pretty casual. Not with Mom, though. He actually stammered when he was talking with her and he stumbled and nearly fell. But he laughed at himself and said he wasn’t nearly that careless when he was operating on someone.

He asked if any of us had heard about the asteroid and the moon. Mom remembered something about it, because it was big news when the astronomers first announced it was going to happen. Some asteroid is going to hit the moon, and Peter heard on the radio driving over that it’s going to be visible in the night sky next week. I asked Mom if we could dig out Matt’s telescope and she said we should ask him, but she was sure it’d be okay.

Jonny and I didn’t even argue over the computer after Mom left. There was something I wanted to watch on TV from 8 to 9 and there was something he wanted to watch from 9 to 10, so that worked out really well.

The fan board is still fighting over whether Brandon’ll need two quads to win the Olympics or whether he could win with just one.

It would be so amazing if Brandon won a gold. I bet we’d have a parade and everything.

It’s 11 already and Mom still isn’t home. I guess she and Peter are out admiring the moon.

Spent the weekend working on my English paper.

Dad called this morning.

Matt says we can use the telescope. He’ll be home in a couple of weeks. He swears he’ll teach me how to drive.

Jonny was named middle school player of the week.

All of a sudden this moon thing is the biggest thing ever. Either that or my teachers are as bored with schoolwork as we are.

I could understand it if I were taking astronomy. But French? Madame O’Brien made us talk about “la lune” the entire class. She’s making us write a composition about it due Friday, because Wednesday night we’re all going to be outside watching the asteroid hit the moon.

Sammi says every time they make a big fuss like that, for an eclipse or a meteor shower, it rains.

It isn’t just Madame O’Brien who’s hot for this asteroid. In English today we talked about the origin of the word lunar. Eddie made a joke about mooning, and Mr. Clifford was so excited about word origins, he didn’t even get mad. He talked about slang instead and metaphors that have to do with astronomy and he gave us a new assignment, too. We can write on any topic that has to do with the moon. Due Friday, of course.