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recess
    You made me lie to you again, but how stupid can you be? Camille didn’t tell you that I ate food out of the trash because she was concerned. She told you because she thinks I’m disgusting.
    And yeah, the truth is that I did fish food out of the trash. I’d eaten all my own lunch because I was, big surprise here,
hungry.
But I wanted to stash away some food so I don’t have to break into my ten dollars and seventeen cents tonight, and the chicken nuggets that Camille and her stupid friends threw away were perfectly good. I’m sorry they saw me, but come on, what’s the big deal? You don’t get all worried when someone pulls a sweatshirt from the lost-and-found, right? Food in the trash is like the
tossed
-and-found.
    Besides, as my mom used to say, it was above the rim.
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    Monday, 3:17 p.m.
    So this is it. I’m on the school bus like I’m supposed to be, but we just passed my stop. Good riddance, Benders! Sayonara, snake-breath! Adios, bozos! I’ll miss you like a nightmare.

    Oh. I just remembered.
    Blackie.
    Oh, crud.
    I wish I could take him with me….
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    Still Monday, 10:30 p.m.
    I’m sitting in a booth in a fast food joint, chowing down on some of Camille’s chicken nuggets, rounded out with salad bar freebies. They’re not supposed to be freebies, but no one’s going to hassle me for snagging a little supplemental nutrition, right? People do it all the time.
    I love the croutons,
mm-mmm.
And don’t worry, I’m balancing things out with some pineapple chunks and even some of that mixed bean stuff that all salad bars have but nobody likes. You know what I’m talking about—red beans, tan beans, onions, vinegar. My mom always made me eat it, so that’s why I’m doing it now.
    So where am I?
    You’re not going to believe this, but I made it over the state line. In one day! I have totally escaped!
    This is what I did: I took the school bus to the farthest stop, found a city bus stop, figured out the map, told a lady who was waiting at the stop that I’d lost my money and didn’t know what to do. She bought me a ticket, and I just stayed on that bus until it turned north, then I got off.
    So, okay, I’ll interrupt myself to tell you that I do have a destination.
    West.
    I don’t care
where
west, just somewhere warm. So southwest, I guess. It’s hard being homeless in the snow, okay? I’m not doing that again.
    Oh, and one more thing—I’ve decided I’m
not
homeless. I’m a gypsy. I’m a gypsy and my home is the great outdoors.
    Hmm. I wonder if I could get to Hawaii somehow. It would be fun to be a sea gypsy! I’d live down by the ocean and eat coconuts and pineapples and mangoes. And I’d go swimming with the dolphins. Or I’d go swimming with other sea gypsies. That’d be so much fun! A bunch of gypsy kids riding waves, laughing, and playing in the surf. And afterward we’d build a big bonfire and roast fish that we caught in a big net that we made out of seaweed, and we’d tell stories all night and just sleep there by the fire and look up at the stars.
    Yeah, it’d be great to be a gypsy in Hawaii.
    I wonder what kind of dogs they have there….
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    Thinking about Hawaii has made me hungry for more pineapple. I’ll be right back….
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    The manager gave me the evil eye, but what do I care? I smiled and took the pineapple anyway. He’s not even close to kicking me out. There’s a group of goth kids in the back booth that he’s a lot more annoyed with.
    Anyway, after I got off the city bus, I went across the street and used the bathroom at a gas station, then went inside the station’s mini-mart thinking I’d try and lift a map. If I don’t know where I’m going, I might wind up