Romance with a twist. by Lora Carlson (best young adult book series .txt) 📕

As Roger L. Maxwell rushes down the hallway his shoes make skid marks on the light green tile floor as he turns left, then right, then left again and finally runs into room 12. He sits down just as the late bell finishes ringing. Roger is a 5ft 2inch 6th grader with spiky dark brown hair, small dark blue eyes… but one of his eyes is electronic. It looks just like his left eye but can record video and sounds and take pictures. He is extremely fast, super skinny but not very strong. He looks to his left and almost faints as he sees her.
Tina Harrison is the world’s prettiest girl, or that’s what Roger thinks. Tina has shoulder length super curly, but never frizzy, blonde hair. She has beautiful green eyes and is perfect in every way, except for the fact that she has braces. She has them on all of her teeth and the braces themselves are purple. Today she is wearing a long purple shirt, with a brown braided belt, with her hair in perfect pigtails (no surprise there).

On the other side of Tina, there’s Liam Travois. He is a tall blonde jock with a surprising IQ. He’s got a blonde buzz cut, big brown eyes, a small nose and he wears earrings. Not big hoop ones like Tina’s but little studs in both ears.
There are a lot of other kids in our class, but none of them bug me like these three.
Last, but not least, there’s me. Amanda Jones, the least popular girl on the planet. I have short black hair and my bangs cover my right eye. Everyone says my eyes are so dark they look black… well my left eye looks like that but my right eye, on the other hand, is hot pink. That’s why I cover it all the time. Today I’m wearing a black shirt with a white scull on it, with a plaid black & white skirt, a chain choker, chain bracelet and army boots (black of course). I’m also wearing black eye shadow, eyeliner, lipstick and nail polish.
Anyway back to school, Ms. Raymond our homeroom teacher turns around and says, “Roger darling, I see that you just made it to class..., again”.
Ms. Raymond is a tall red head middle-aged woman with very pretty blue eyes that sparkle through her glasses like diamonds. Her ears poke out of her straight hair a little, which flows to her waist. She has a small nose and a big smile with sparkling white teeth.
Roger sheepishly replies, “ I had trouble with…” he looks out of the corner of his eye at Liam, “with my locker.”
Ms. Raymond sighs, “Again? Maybe we should have the custodian look at that. Remind me after class and we’ll send him an email. Okay, today class your book reports are due. Amanda, will you collect them for me please?”
I stand up and walk to the front of the room saying, “ Sure, whatever you say.” As I walk down the rows of kids I notice not many people are holding up papers for me to take. It seems like two out of three kids forgot their book reports. When I get to Tina she stands up and walks out the door. We all stare after her. Soon she comes back with a wheelbarrow overflowing with paper.

“Is that your book report…. and is the paper purple?” I almost shout.
“Of course it’s purple and yes this my book report, how long is yours?” she sneers.
“Three pages. Yours?”
“3,333 pages. Three is my lucky number.” She rolls the wheelbarrow to Ms. Raymond’s desk and sets it down with a smile.
“I thought 20 was your lucky number.”
“Why would 20 be my lucky number?” she asks with a flip of her hair as she walks back and gracefully sits down at her desk, Smoothing out her shirt.
“Because T is the 20th number of the alphabet and your name starts with T. Don’t you remember telling us last month when you turned in your extra credit assignments?” I say with a brief smile. She doesn’t say anything so I assume this conversation is over.

As I walk up to Ms. Raymond I realize I don’t have my book report. I excuse myself and quickly run into the hallway and straight into Tracy McMullen my best friend (she is the only person besides my family that knows about my right eye). We both collapse on the floor and start laughing. We have every class together besides homeroom. Tracy has light-ish brown skin, a small but frizzy Afro, her hair is a milk chocolaty brown. She has brown eyes, but never wears brown, only fun colors like red, blue, green, white, purple, orange, and my favorite black. Today she is wearing a tie-dye t-shirt of all those colors and black short-shorts with neon green converse. We stand up and she says to me,
“Wow, you came out fast, why?”
“I need to get my book report. I left it in my locker. Sorry for knocking you over, Tracy.”
“No problem, but what’s the rush?” she asks while smoothing her shirt. She has such a smooth tone to her voice.
“They’re due…”
We both jump when Ms. Raymond shouts, “NOW!! THEY’RE DUE NOW!!” Ms. Raymond is really nice, but sometimes she can turn into something so scary you think she’s actually a devil that came to kill you from the deepest holes of hell.

We give each other our eye roll and I say goodbye to Tracy. Sliding across the hall I whip open my locker and grab my book report and scurry back into room 12.

The next week we get our report results as soon as Ms. Raymond enters the classroom.
“Class, Tina will pass out your reports. And Tina?”
“Yes Ms. Raymond?”
“I graded yours up to chapter 20. There was just too much. Try to make it shorter next time. It’s still in the trunk of my car. You’ll have to come pick it up from me in the parking lot after school.”
“That’s okay. I just got so into it I guess I couldn’t stop.” With that Tina smiles and starts passing out book reports. When she gets to me she stops, takes out her purple pen (with purple ink) writes something and hands it to me.
My report score was 100% but over it, it says, “You should have gotten a 0% it was the worst book report EVER!! Love Tina Harrison your loving classmate!”

I don’t crumple it up and throw it away. Instead I put it in my folder and sit smugly in my seat. For the rest of the hour I daydream about after class. As soon as the bell rings, I run into the hall and then I put my report on the big bulletin board with a big circle around what Tina wrote, in pen so it can’t be erased. Leaving class, Tina walks by with her BFF Katrina. Now Katrina is a 5ft 9in blonde. Her hair is wavy down to her shoulders. She has really big blue eyes and TOWERS over Tina (nobody knows this but they’re actually sisters, I’ll explain that later, much MUCH later.)
As Tracy leaves her class I grab her and pull her with me. We camp out around the corner from the bulletin board to see what will happen. Tina almost walked past but the purple ink must have drawn her in. She took one look and started to scream, ripping my paper off the board. Then she starts to yell at top of her lungs, “AMANDA JONES I’LL GET YOU FOR THIS IF IT’S THE LAST THING I DO!!” She smashes my report into a ball and tries to throw it, but it doesn’t go very far. Then she tries to kick it but misses.
After that she storms off with a giggling Katrina behind her.

Tracy and I couldn’t help ourselves, we fell out from behind the corner onto the floor laughing so hard we had stomach and head aches for the rest of the day. Every time we saw Tina she would glare at us and turn her head quickly away, making her pony tails fly. She hit more than one person with them, including Katrina, who didn’t find it very funny anymore.
I picked up my report and smoothed it out. I put it into my backpack and we walked to our next class trying to catch our breath. Every time we looked at each other for the rest of the day, we would start to laugh again. I had to sit in the hallway during science for disrupting class, but it was worth it.
When I got home I texted Tracy.


T: 2day tina-beana was lol
A: ikr did u c ti look on her face
T: wat did ti paper say?
A: it was my book report tina-beana had written somting mean on it
T: well… whatev wat u wearing 2morrow?
A: I cant tel u gtg luv ya!
T: u 2!!
Amy is off txt chat
Trace is off txt chat

When Tracy and I got to school we hugged, split up and each went to our different classes. You’ve might have been thinking I look Goth, but I don’t act Goth. Well okay, I can’t deny it, it’s true I’m a happy, loving Goth girl.