QUIZ TIME!
Write down your answers and tally up the points at the end.
It’s your thirteenth birthday and you’re psyched! Your favorite part is: A. the presents! You can’t wait to rip into some shiny wrapped packages with your name on ’em.
B. getting to say that you’re officially a teenager. Finally you get to join the club! You can’t help feeling special.
C. having a good excuse to throw a party and show your friends a good time. It really wouldn’t matter whose birthday it was—getting to go to the roller rink and laugh your heads off would be a riot no matter what!
D. seeing your friends’ faces when they open their goody bags. (They’re going to love the rubber-ducky key chain that quacks when you squeeze it.)
As you were walking past the new salon in the mall, one of the workers handed you a few coupons for free services as part of their Grand Opening promotion. Sweet! What are you going to do with them? A. Use them all, of course! It isn’t often that you get your nails done by a professional. You’ll use one to get a manicure, one for a pedicure, and maybe you’ll get a shampoo while you’re at it.…
B. Save them so that you can bring your friends with you. It’ll be more fun if you can all get manicures together.
C. Use one for yourself and give the other two to your mom for her birthday. She could use a little pampering at the salon.
D. Give all the coupons to the charity Dress for Success, which helps low-income women prepare for job interviews. It’s a great cause and now you can contribute!
When your friends sleep over at your house, you always: A. take your bed and let them curl up in sleeping bags on the floor. It would take a lot more than a slumber party to make you give up your supercomfy mattress.
B. let one friend join you in the bed, but the rest will have to take the floor. It’s only fair—when you sleep over at their houses, you’re on floor duty.
C. invite everybody to pile onto your bed. If you all sleep sideways, you just might fit. And it’ll be easier to whisper your ghost stories if they’re all close by.
D. take a spot on the floor alongside your friends. Part of the fun of a slumber party is feeling like you’re camping out in the woods or something. You’ll leave the bed free for anyone who decides the floor is too uncomfortable.
You and the cutie from your history class are both doing a report on the California gold rush. You get to the library at the same time and find out that there’s only one copy left of the book you both need. So of course you: A. race through the history section to get to it first and check it out before he even has a chance to lay his eyes on it. He may be cute, but you’re fast!
B. make sure you get to the book first, then tell him you’ll lend it to him when you’re done. (It’ll probably be a while, though.)
C. tell him the two of you can share the book. You are looking for the same info, after all. (Plus, spending the day rubbing elbows with a cutie won’t exactly be torture.)
D. let him have the book. You’re way better at researching on the Internet than he is, so he’ll need the book more than you will anyway.
You and your little sister have let your rooms become total disaster areas. Your parents tell you both to clean up, and whoever finishes first will win a little extra money in her allowance this week. Who comes out on top? A. You do. You are older, faster, and a little more in need of extra allowance. Your sister will just have to work harder next time!
B. You finish first, but you give your sister a little bit of the reward money so that she can buy herself a consolation prize.
C. You finish first, but then go over to your sister’s room and help her finish cleaning. You split the money with her. You both earned it.
D. You are a pro at cleaning your room and could have done it in minutes flat, but you take your sweet time so that your little sis will win. You know that she’s saving up to buy a bike and has been working really hard. So now she’ll have a new bike and a clean room to put it in!
Give yourself 1 point for every time you answered A, 2 points for every B, 3 points for every C, and 4 points for every D.
—If you scored between 5 and 12, go to this page.
—If you scored between 13 and 20, go to this page.
You have a wild imagination. People like you tend to become writers, artists, and inventors, to name just a few of the possibilities. You tend to dream in color and in vivid detail about crazy things that have never happened to you in real life. That’s because even while you’re asleep, your creative mind is working overtime, which makes life more interesting. But be careful not to lose touch with reality altogether. There is a time and place for everything, and sometimes you need to deal with the real world as it is, and not as you imagine it to be.
“Well …,” you begin, casting nervous glances at Lena and Jessie, praying that they’ll play along, “it’s like this. We got here and were totally going to wait for you. But then we saw this woman get mugged and the robber ran that way with her purse. So we all ran after him to see where he was going.”
“Really?” the officer says, jotting down a note in his pad. “And how did you keep track of him? It’s kind of crowded out here.”
“Oh, uh … well, it wasn’t too hard since he was wearing a Santa Claus suit. That bright red really stands out, you know?”
“Uh-huh. And what color was the purse?”
All of you answer at once. “Brown,” you say.
“Pink,” says Jessie.
“Blue,” says Lena.
The officer looks up from his notepad. “Which is it, girls? Brown, pink, or blue?”
“Um … all three,” you reply. “Yeah, it was sort of like a peacock-colored purse with all different colors.”
“Oookay,” the officer says, casting a look at Amanda, who crosses her arms in front of her. “And how did this bad guy manage to get away? If there was a getaway car, we could trace it.”
“No, no, there was no car,” you say, urging your brain to think faster. “There would have been too much traffic, so he grabbed one of those horse and carriages, pulled the driver out, and galloped away.” You point toward a path lined densely with trees, leading into Central Park.
The police officer heaves a heavy sigh and drops his arms. “So let me get this straight. A mugger in a Santa suit robbed a woman of her peacock-colored purse and then because three thirteen-year-old girls were chasing him, he stole a horse and carriage and took off into the park. Is that what you’re telling me?”
You bite your lip and avoid eye contact. When you hear it all together like that, your story sounds ridiculous. But you have no choice but to commit at this point. “Uh … yes?”
“You do know that if this really happened, both the purse and the horse and carriage would have been reported stolen, and I can find out if there’s been a report filed with one quick phone call to my precinct. Excuse me while I go confirm your story. It should only take a second. Oh, and just so you know, lying to a police officer is considered a crime. Good thing you three would never do a thing like that. Okay, be right back, ladies.”
He turns away and starts ambling toward his squad car. Suddenly you are picturing yourself sitting in the backseat, begging Amanda to call your mom to get you out of jail.
“Wait!” you and your friends all cry, reaching toward the officer.
“Yeah?” He turns back nonchalantly, like he knew you wouldn’t let him get all the way to his car. “Something you girls wanna tell me?”
You sigh heavily. “Okay, there was no mugger and no purse.”
“And I’m guessing no Santa suit involved either, right?”
You shake your head miserably.
“Good. Why don’t you try the truth this time?”
Jessie shrugs. “I saw somebody that I thought was a Jonas brother, so we ran after him. We didn’t realize how far we’d run, but I guess it was pretty far, because by the time we got back, you were here.”
“Is that it?” Amanda asks
.
You each nod your head.
“Was it a Jonas brother at least?”
You all shake your heads and stare at the ground.
Amanda purses her lips and rubs her temples with her fingers. It’s the same gesture your mom makes when you’re working her last nerve and she’s fighting the urge to sell you to a traveling circus. She turns to the policeman, who is watching this whole scene with a smirk of amusement. “I’m so sorry to have wasted your time, Officer. Thank you for all your help.”
“No problem, miss,” he says, adjusting his heavy belt. “And you girls, stay outta trouble, will ya?”
You nod and fold your hands in front of you the way you do at school when you’re trying to look as innocent as humanly possible. For all you know, he could still lock you up just to teach you a lesson, and an orange jumpsuit would definitely clash with your complexion.
After the squad car speeds away, Amanda shakes her long brown hair out of her almost completely undone bun. Then she runs one hand through it and sighs deeply. But she doesn’t say a word. Somebody’s got to break the silence.
“So … what now?” you ask, scared to hear the answer. Do people still get tarred and feathered these days? You read about that in your history book and it sounds … unpleasant. Probably a college student wouldn’t have tar handy, although the feathers would be easy enough.…
“I haven’t decided yet,” Amanda says at last. “On one hand, after the morning I’ve had, I’m not sure I can handle you three. Maybe I should just return you to your class trip and let your teachers deal with you. On the other, if I thought you were really sorry about all this, I might want to take you somewhere that would open your eyes to the fact that there are more important things than scoping celebrities. But I need to know: Can you see that what you did was wrong?”
That’s the million-dollar question. Too bad you’re not sure how to answer it. Seriously, was getting on a runaway train, stalking a celebrity look-alike, lying to a police officer, framing innocent Santa Claus–suit wearers, and nearly causing Amanda a heart attack that bad? Couldn’t those things have happened to anyone?
Your New York City adventure ended up being a little more adventurous than you bargained for. Who knew that a day that started so innocently (walking single file into a museum to view ancient treasures) would end with you almost being sent to the slammer (okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but there was a police car involved). But still, were any of the day’s events really your fault? Amanda seems to think so. If you think so too, now would be a good time to own up to it and see if Amanda will give you a second chance. If not, you’ll just have to end your time with Lena’s cousin and hope she sees it your way one day. So what’ll it be?
QUIZ TIME!
Write down your answers and tally up the points at the end.
You accused the boy who sits next to you in math class of cheating off you during a test, and he got in major trouble. But when they compared the two tests, most of his answers were totally different from yours. Turns out he wasn’t cheating after all! What’s your next move? A. You stick to your story. He did glare over at you a lot during the test; you didn’t just imagine that. He probably changed some of his answers just to cover his tracks.
B. Reluctantly accept the proof of his innocence, but insist that you had your reasons for thinking he cheated.
C. Mumble an apology to him and to your teacher. Then try to put the embarrassing episode behind you.
D. Apologize like crazy to him, your teacher, and the whole class. You feel terrible for having accused him of something he obviously didn’t do. Next time you’ll keep your crazy theories to yourself.
You and your BFF have had a huge falling-out. (No need to rehash the sordid details, but let’s just say it involved a borrowed pair of suede shoes, a sandy beach, and high tide.) How do you get past it? A. You wait until she apologizes. Even if you were wrong, you would still rather maintain the silent treatment forever than actually admit it. Who lends a person suede shoes anyway? Clearly she was in the wrong.
B. Wait until one of your parents makes you apologize. You know your friend is mad, but you still wouldn’t have given in if someone hadn’t forced you to.
C. You end up apologizing to each other. You tell her how sorry you are for ruining her shoes, and she apologizes for flying off the handle about it. (It’s not like you did it on purpose.)
D. You apologize first and offer to save up to get her a new pair. You knew you shouldn’t have worn those shoes to the beach, but you did it anyway. And even though you don’t think you deserved the amount of yelling she did, you hate it when there’s tension between you and find that apologizing always breaks the ice.
You are on your way out to meet some friends at the mall when your mom warns you that it is going to rain and will be terrible weather for the pretty yellow sundress you bought over the weekend. But all you see are blue skies for miles! You wear the dress anyway and of course, the minute you get a few steps away from your house, the skies open up and it starts pouring. What do you do? A. Keep going to the mall anyway and show up soaking wet and sick as a dog. Nobody (cough cough) is going to tell you (aaa-CHOO!) when you should wear your yellow sundress! (sniffle sniffle)
B. Sneak in your back door to snag your raincoat and galoshes. You don’t want to show up at the mall looking like you’ve just been through a car wash, but you don’t want to hear your mom say “I told you so” either.
C. Come back home and say that you were only kidding about wearing the sundress. Ha-ha. You were just testing your mom’s parenting skills. Yeah, that’s it.…
D. Return home to the open arms of your mom, who is waiting for you with a dry towel and a sympathetic look in her eye. “Fine, you were right,” you admit. “Can I have a ride to the mall—after I change?” You’re not too proud to recognize when you’ve been bested.
It’s a gorgeous day out and you’d much rather go to the park than go to school. You convince two of your friends to cut school with you and have a picnic instead. Naturally, you get busted. When faced with all of your parents, you: A. blame your friends for exerting their peer pressure on you. They turn to you with faces full of shock at your betrayal, but it’s either you or them!
B. lie and claim you were heading back to school, but got sidetracked looking for your friend’s lost contact lens. It’s a stretch, but it’s worth a shot.
C. try appealing to their sense of justice. Seriously, is it really fair to force you three to go to school on a day like today? No one could blame you for wanting to enjoy the great outdoors. (Note: This one won’t fly either, but they’ve gotta admire your moxie.)
D. admit you were the ringleader and take your lumps. Your friends will get in trouble anyway for going along with you, but at least their parents will know that it wasn’t their idea, so maybe they’ll forgive you later.
A friend of yours started hanging out with a guy a few weeks ago who you swore was bad news. Granted, this opinion was based solely on the fact that he wears a lot of black clothes and has an emo haircut (a la Peter Parker in Spider-Man 3 when he turns bad). And yet, since then, he has proven to be supersweet and attentive, treating your friend very well. Do you eat your words? A. No way! He’ll show his true colors eventually, and when he does, your friend will know that you were just looking out for her.
B. You admit he seems nicer than you thought. But you’re still going to keep a wary eye on him, and you advise your friend to do the same.
C. Begrudgingly, you agree that he isn’t the dangerous jerk you thought he was. That doesn’t mean she has to gloat about it, though. Sheesh.
D. Totally. You can’t believe it, but he has turned out to be pretty awesome and your friend seems happy. You apologize for doubting him. For once, you’re glad you were wrong. (Not that you plan to make a habit of it or anything.)
Give yourself 1 point for every time you answered A, 2 points for every B, 3 points for every C, and 4 points for every D.
�
��If you scored between 5 and 12, go to this page.
—If you scored between 13 and 20, go to this page.
The truth is your friend. You’ve got your feet firmly planted on the earth and your head is nowhere near the clouds. Your buds tend to come to you when they need a reality check, and nothing appeals to you more than cold hard facts. It’s great that you’re so grounded, but every now and then it’s okay to let your brain play. After all, imagination is the spark that led to some of the world’s greatest inventions—like 3-D movies, airplanes, and the Snuggie. (Well, maybe not so much the Snuggie, but you get the gist.)
You always hear people say that they wish they could go back in time and do things differently. But if you had your way? You’d have the power to fast-forward through moments just like this one.
You and your two best friends are standing on the corner of Fifty-ninth Street and Lexington, firmly in the grip of the long arm of the law. Amanda and the officer she flagged down to help find you—you know, back when you thought it was just a great idea to leave the corner where you were supposed to meet Lena’s cousin, causing her to think you’d been kidnapped or worse—are waiting for an explanation.
You’d love to tell them something that would seem perfectly reasonable, but the fact is, you’ve got nothing but the truth. You can’t imagine any story you could come up with that would be even remotely plausible, anyway.
“Well, it’s like this …,” you say seriously. “We saw someone that we thought was Nick Jonas and he was moving really fast. And we thought it might be our only chance to meet him, so we kind of had to follow him and—”
Your Life, but Sweeter Page 10