Graveyard Slot by Michelle Schusterman (classic children's novels .TXT) 📕

I snorted. “I don’t care. I don’t even know why . . .” I stopped, staring down at my knees. I could feel Dad’s eyes on me. “Wouldn’t it bother you? Me being a bridesmaid for her? Because I won’t do it if you don’t want me to.”

“Kat, look at me.”

Grimacing, I forced myself to look up.

Dad took a deep breath. “I know you’re still angry at her, and I know you’ve been trying to work on it. Whether or not you’re in her wedding is entirely your decision—I’ll support you either way. But I need you to know that you being a part of your mother’s life isn’t betraying me at all. Okay?”

“Okay,” I mumbled. He got to his feet, kissed the top of my head, and said, “Breakfast?”

“Yeah.”

“One minute, just gotta brush my teeth.”

As soon as the bathroom door had closed behind Dad, I clicked over to my blog to check the comments on my post about the catacombs. “Seventy-three,” I murmured. “Hooray.” I scrolled quickly, not bothering to read the ones of my friends and the regular forum fans who commented. My stomach tightened as I got closer to the bottom. Sure enough, there he was.

kbold04: maybe ur the 1 whos possessed. or do u always look that disgusting

kbold04: can’t beleive u r deleting all my comments like thats gonna stop me haha

kbold04: r u a zombie? a zombie wearing a zombie shirt? lol

He’d left thirty-one comments this time. They got progressively worse as they went along. I deleted them, but not after saving a screenshot of each one to add to my collection. I knew it was stupid to let one random person get to me this much. A stranger, someone whose opinion shouldn’t even matter to me. And that’s all it was—opinions, not threats. This wasn’t like the letters Emily sent Sam, which (according to Roland) had gotten increasingly threatening. If this person was sending me stuff like that, I’d tell someone. But these comments . . . they were just words. Words I didn’t want anyone else to see. I could handle it by myself.

Dad and I didn’t talk much on the way downstairs. Trolls aside, I felt stupid for bringing the bridesmaid thing up with him. It’s not like I ever thought for a second my dad would actually tell me he didn’t want me in the wedding. I guess I just wanted someone else to make the decision for me, because I kept having the conversation with Mom in my head, and I got stuck in the same place every time.

Mom, I don’t want to be in your wedding.

Why not?

Because you and Dad just got divorced, and it’s weird. That wasn’t entirely true. I mean, it was really fast. But they’d been separated for half a year before the divorce. Mom’s engagement had shocked me at first, but that wasn’t what was really bothering me.

Because when you try to “girlify” me, it makes me feel like I’m not good enough. That was true. In fifth grade I’d been so excited about Halloween that I woke up Thursday, thought it was already Friday, and wore my zombie-clown costume to school. That whole day, I felt exactly like I did all the times Mom dressed me up: Everyone laughed when they saw me, but they also said lots of nice things about how great I looked, and then I spent the rest of the day feeling weird walking around dressed all funny when everybody else was just themselves. But that wasn’t what was really bothering me, either. I could deal with dresses and makeup for a day, even if they made me feel awkward.

Because I don’t see why I should be a part of your wedding when I’m not a part of your family. That was it. Mom used to have a husband and a daughter, but she kept leaving because she wasn’t happy. Now she had a different soon-to-be husband and a different soon-to-be daughter, and she was the happiest I’d ever seen her. Why bother reinserting myself into the picture after she’d cut me out of it?

The problem was, every time I mentally said this to Mom, my eyes got all hot and watery. If I couldn’t say it in my head without crying, no way could I get through it for real.

Maybe I could tell her in an e-mail via emojis.

“What’s so funny?” Dad asked as we walked into the breakfast room.

“Nothing.” I pressed my lips together.

After topping my stack of pancakes off with a waffle, I joined Oscar, Jamie, and Hailey at a table in the corner. We spent most of the next twenty minutes making plans for the video we were shooting this afternoon. Abril and Thiago were meeting us at the catacombs entrance, and then we were going to find the giant willow tree Brunilda mentioned in her journal. Lidia had loved the idea of featuring a few local kids in the web series, and she’d called their parents to get their permission and sent them a release waiver to sign.

At Jess’s suggestion, I’d written a short outline like she did before shooting every episode. It described how to start and end the video and what “scenes” I envisioned. Once again, I found myself kind of enjoying the work Jess and Dad did to prepare for shows. I was hoping that sharing camera time with five other people instead of just one would make this a more fun experience.

I was so caught up in what we were doing that I didn’t realize Mi Jin wasn’t with the rest of the cast at the table next to us. Not until she appeared in the entrance, cleared her throat loudly, and said: “Ta-da!”

Glancing up, I choked on a mouthful of orange juice. Mi Jin stood there, arms outstretched, beaming. And she was bald. Okay, not completely bald. More like a buzz cut, a soft fuzz of black still