The Not-So-Great Depression - Softcover

AMY GOLDMAN KOSS is the author of several acclaimed teen novels, including POISON IVY and SIDE EFFECTS. She lives in Glendale, CA. Visit her at www.amygoldmankoss.net.

Chapter 1
Dragons and Bees

FRIDAYS AT MY SCHOOL OFTEN BEGIN WITH DISASTER. We’re having this one out on the bleachers instead of in the audito­rium and I’m sitting with Emily, of course. I start telling her how Creepy Carly the Creeperton almost killed me and my brother driving us to school, but Emily’s barely listening.
“Hey!” I say. “I’m complaining  here!”
And Emily says, “I noticed that.”
“Well, where are all your sympathetic grunts and pity sounds?” I ask.
Emily shrugs.
I give her a nudge and say, “What’s wrong? You sick?”
Em shrugs again, and sighs. She’s not usually a sigher.
“I promised I  wouldn’t tell anyone,” she says.
“What aren’t you supposed to... Wait, I’m not anyone!” I say.
Emily bends over and puts her face in her hands.
“Who did you promise?” I ask.
“Nora,” Emily says from under her hands.
“Your cousin Nora?”
Emily nods.
“She’s pregnant?” That’s a joke. Nora is only twelve and not the  pregnant- at- twelve type.
Emily shakes her  half- hidden head.
“She bludgeoned someone to death?”
Emily snorts. Nora is a teeny, tiny, bird- boned little thing.
“She’s in jail? Caught the plague? Won the lottery? Got a puppy? Pierced her eyeball? Am I getting warm?”
Emily looks up. “No.”
“Just tell me then. The assembly’s going to start any second!”
Emily looks around as if there might be spies.  We’re jammed in on all sides by everyone, but I guess she decides it’s safe because she whispers, “Nora and her parents are moving in with us.”
“Wow! That will be fun!” I say, and I mean it. Emily doesn’t have any brothers or sisters and I think two families living together would be a blast... Even if Nora is a little bit whiny and the tiniest bit overly serious.
“But Jacki, they’re moving in because they lost their  house,” Em explains, keeping her voice low.
“Why don’t they just look on their old street?” I ask. “Be­tween their neighbors? I bet it’s still there.”
Emily rolls her eyes.
Principal Nicholson blows into the microphone and says, “All rise for the Pledge.”
We stand. “I pledge allegiance to the . . .”
I’ve totally heard of losing  houses.
Just a few days ago, I asked my mom why there  were sud­denly For Sale signs all over the place. She said people couldn’t afford to stay in their  houses anymore.
I was so disappointed by this explanation.
“Or that’s just the cover story,” I said. “And the truth is there’s been a horrendous mutating toxic spill that the govern­ment is hushing up so we won’t all panic and go shrieking into the hills!”
“Sorry, Sweetie Pie,” Mom said, “but I’m pretty sure it’s just an economic thing.”
“. . . with liberty and justice for all.” We sit.
I wonder why Nora swore Emily to silent secrecy about it, though. I can see how it would be upsetting to lose your  house, but secrecy goes with something truly embarrassing or shame­fully humiliating, right? I mean it’s not like Nora’s parents danced naked at her All School Assembly or anything.
Principal Nicholson seems to be done announcing things. She introduces today’s disaster guest, a traf.c safety guy. Last week we had a lockdown drill lady talking about school shooters. Before that, it was the drug police and their dope snif.ng dog.
Except for the dog, who was adorable, our Friday guests are always shaking their .ngers and warning us about how terrible the world is. I think we should just have all of them here on the same day and get it over with.
Yes! A Misery Marathon!
The pep squad could make signs, “Welcome Dudes of Gloom!” The kindergarten would sing a cute little song of grim despair. The elementary would put on adorable disaster skits between each lecture. First grade, catastrophic poisoning. Sec­ond grade, brush .re. How sweet they’d look in their “engulfed in .ames” costumes! Stop! Drop! Roll!
Anyway, at least  we’re not in class, and there’s a teeny bit of a breeze. Emily is drawing on my arm and the pen tickles.
We sit according to grade, so my little (.fteen months younger, but four inches taller than me) brother Mitch is below me with his class, and my sister Brooke is above. I turn around to .nd her, but something furry catches my eye.
Look! Cupped in Lauren’s hand is a tiny brown and white hamster! He’s washing his incredibly cute face with his teeny pink hands.
“Hello!”
“Shhhh!” Lauren hisses, and the hamster disappears. “Don’t tell anyone!”
“No, wait!” I cry. “I won’t tell a soul! Never! Not a peep! I swear!”
But Lauren doesn’t bring the hamster back out. Instead she leans forward and whispers, “His name is Chubbs. He came to school in my pocket.”
I start to laugh, but she shushes me again.
“Is your pocket full of hamster poop?” I ask very, very quietly.
“Worth it!” she says. Then she sits back and looks past me as if there’s no tiny secret hamster stowed away in her pocket... as if she’s suddenly interested in the safety guy who for some reason calls bike helmets “brain buckets.”
I want a hamster. I need one. Imagine how wonderful the school day would be with a hamster curled up in my pocket!
I bet he’s super soft. I’d let him run around on my desk in French. Share my lunch.
Maybe if I’m really good, and if I nag relentlessly and pass math and French, and am nice to Carly, and practice piano until my .ngers bleed, my mom will let me get a tiny  face-washing hamster of my own.
I turn around to see if maybe Chubbs is out again, but he isn’t. There’s Brooke, though, in the tippy top row with the other seniors. My beautiful sister. She glows.
How will I stand it next year when it’ll just be me and Mitch on these bleachers? The thought makes me sad to the bone.
I look down. Oh! Emily got a little carried away. My entire left arm is a big ugly dinosaur whose toenails de.nitely need cutting, and whose tail is very strangely shaped and horrid looking.
“Nice,” I say.
Emily smiles.
“I have a piano recital tomorrow morning, though.”
Emily un- smiles.
“Think it’ll wash off by then?”
Em shrugs. “Maybe. Plus you could use like, I don’t know, sandpaper or something.”
Ms. Kaufman turns around and points her .erce index .nger at us.
“No matter,” I whisper to Emily, “Mr. Rodriguez is prob­ably going to beat me to a bloody stump when he .nds out I forgot my homework again. Your dinosaur will blend with the bruises.”
“It’s not a dinosaur.”
“Um . . . a dragon?” I ask.
“Obviously!” Emily fake pouts. “Is it or is it not breathing .re?”
“I thought it was eating a . . . well... maybe a blanket?”
Ms. Kaufman turns around again to hiss, “Shhhh! Girls!”
*** After school I’ve got four minutes to get to track, but .rst I have to .nd Emily because Coach Keefer said if I show up at one more practice without socks she’s going to make me scrub the locker room. There’s Em! “But Jacki,” she says, “I’ve been sweating in these socks all day!” “That’s OK. Just hurry!” “Ee www!” she says, wrinkling her nose. She sits down on the .oor to untie her shoes. “You know, if you’d told me at lunch, I could have taken them off then, and...” “It’ll be .ne,” I say. “You’re a peach, a doll, my hero.” “I know,” Emily says, peeling off her socks, and wiggling her toes. “Here ya go!” She holds them up to me by the tips of her .ngers. “Later!” I call, and take off for the locker room. “Gator,” she replies, as she has since kindergarten. I’m holding Emily’s socks under the hand dryer when I remember that permission slips are absolutely, positively due today for something. The away meets, maybe? Oops. So even with socks, Coach Keefer is going to kill me. Worse, she’s going to make me run stairs again. That’s her favorite torture. What am I doing in track anyway? I hate everything about
it. Well, I like running, zoom, just .at out, with the wind in my face. And I love running with other people, like a herd of cari­bou kicking up our hooves.
But racing against my fellow caribou ruins everything. Then I’m a lone creature being chased by hungry lions! Run­ning in terror instead of running to celebrate the joy of life with my pals.
I tried to explain that to Coach Keefer once and she curled her lip and sneered, “My, aren’t you the little nature poet,” which I guess was a deeply vile insult from her.
But while I’m running stairs at the far end of the .eld, pant­ing and wheezing and feeling this close to puking, I wipe the sweat out of my eyes and see a mamma deer and her two babies step out from between some trees and walk right across the parking lot! Wow! One of the babies stops to look around, and I wave, “Hi, Bambi!”
A hamster on the bleachers and a family of deer in the parking lot in the middle of Los Angeles? That’s got to be a sign, right?
*** You’d think I’d know by now not to tell Carly anything, but while  we’re waiting for my brother to get out of bas...