Sorta Like a Rock Star Read Online Free Page A

hand—like a moron.
    Donna is my hero—plain and simple.
    Sometimes, when she is being extra cool, I can do little more than marvel at her.
    I admire Donna more than anyone.
    I want to be Donna.
    She grew up on the other side of the tracks, as they say. Her father was a truck driver, her mother died of cancer when she was seven, but she kicked butt in school and got a scholarship to Bryn Mawr College, which is a school for women who do not need a man to take care of them. She kicked butt at Bryn Mawr, earning a scholarship to Harvard Law School, where she became a lawyer. She wanted to have a child but not a husband, so she purchased some sperm and had Ricky, who turned out to be autistic, which did not freak her out at all, even though the sperm was supposedly screened for potential birth defects or something like that. She loves the hooey out of Ricky, and will kick your butt if you mess with her boy.
    Donna is model tall with naturally blond shoulder-length hair. She wears these very cool business suits that are sexy in a serious womanly way, and she sports these killer heels every day. Men must seriously dig her, I’m sure. She drives a black Mercedes SUV that can fit all five members of the Franks Freak Force Federation—which is one of the awesome team names me and my closest friends, my boys, call ourselves—we all fit in the SUV if we put Chad on someone’s lap, and Donna is always carting us around, because she digs freaky teenagers like me and the rest of The Five.
    Ever since I first made friends with Ricky back in elementary school, she has let me call her Donna, and she is always doing cool things for me, like buying Bobby Big Boy food and letting him crash in her home when I am at school, even after he ripped up her leather couch, because he gets separation anxiety when I’m not around.
    Plus, I used to steal her makeup, when I first went through puberty and started feeling the need to look pretty, and Donna wears—like—only the most expensive department store hooey too. I’m not proud of stealing her stuff, but one day when I was—like—fourteen, I went into her bathroom looking to score some makeup, and when I opened the medicine cabinet, there was a little sign that read “Amber’s Shelf,” and on it were all the top makeup brands that she wears. Brand-new gear everywhere. I felt so guilty, I started sobbing in the bathroom, and when Donna heard me, she actually came in and hugged me. I held on to her for at least ten minutes, I felt so shameful. When I stopped crying, she looked me in the eyes and said, “If you ever need something, just ask. Okay?”
    That was it.
    No reprimand.
    No threats to tell my mother.
    No guilt trip.
    I’ve never stolen anything since—not even a piece of paper from school—and never will ever again, no matter how bad things get. Word.
    As I finish cooking the last omelet, Donna scans through the business section of the paper and mumbles stuff about all her stocks shitting the bed.
    I marvel at her—a woman with stocks and business suits and her own house. And then, I’m secretly wishing that she were my mother, which I realize is a terrible thing to wish, but I can’t help it.
    “Amber Appleton uses hot sauce in her omelet. Yes. She likes to cook omelets on Tuesday mornings. Yes. Amber Appleton is very pretty and I would like to kiss her under the apple tree because she is Amber Apple-TON! Yes.”
    “Good morning, Ricky,” I say to my friend, who is wearing his Tuesday Chase Utley home jersey—number 26.
    “Amber Appleton is going to take Ricky Roberts out of Ricky Roberts’ house tonight but he doesn’t know where and Mommy Roberts will not tell him. Mommy Roberts will not tell him where. Yes!”
    “We’re going to do a mission tonight. Remember?” I say to the now-seated Ricky while placing an omelet in front of him. “And when the Franks Freak Force Federation does a mission, how does Ricky Roberts receive information?”
    “Ricky Roberts