Just Do This One Thing for Me - Softcover

Zimmermann, Laura

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593530349 ISBN 13: 9780593530344

Verlag: Penguin Young Readers Group, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

EDGAR AWARD FINALIST • A timely novel about a rule-following daughter trying to hold her family together after her scammer of a mother disappears.

“A witty, off-beat, and strangely charming look at just how far an eldest child will go to keep their younger siblings together.”—School Library Journal

“A wild ride.”—Minnesota Public Radio

Just do this one thing for me.

One thing? The division of labor in Drew’s family goes like this: Mom manages a few shady side hustles, a thriving fake review business, and an obsession with Justin Timberlake; Drew is responsible for every other thing, including herself, her younger siblings, groceries, ukulele lessons, optometry, snow blowing, and solving all the problems the rest of the family creates. Drew is a planner, a rule follower, and mere months from leaving the chaos of her mother’s world behind for the list-making, box-checking structure of college, which is why she agrees when the Momnipulator leaves her in charge while she takes a last-minute trip to a concert in Mexico City. What’s one more “just one thing”?

But when Heidi fails to return, Drew finds herself in the middle of the biggest mess of all—and in a race to figure it all out before the thaw. She can either stick with her plans, do the responsible thing, and walk away alone. Or she can take over the cons, stay a step ahead of the law, and just maybe hold her family together.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Laura Zimmermann is a multiple-time champion of the Twin Cities Moth and Word Sprout story slams, and she was chosen to participate in the 2018 Listen To Your Mother storytelling show. Her debut novel, My Eyes Are Up Here, won the Minnesota Book Award. She lives with her family in Minneapolis, MN.

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CHAPTER TWO

The thing about being raised (“raised”) by someone like Heidi Hill is that you could end up with a very slippery relationship with the rules (“rules”). Like my sister.

But I am a born rule follower, a truth teller, a doer of homework, and a dotter and crosser of all letters and symbols and punctuation that require dots and crosses. And I don’t dot them with hearts or open circles. Just dots, like they are supposed to be dotted.

I meet deadlines. I set alarms. I make lists. I check them. Twice. I never cheat on anything (or anyone). I don’t round corners. I don’t round up. If it was only twenty-­one hours since I’d had a fever, I would insist on waiting three more before going back to school, even if there was a class party that day.

Case in point, fourth grade:

“Aren’t you getting on the bus?”

“I can’t go until 10:07. That’s when I checked yesterday and I didn’t have a fever anymore. You have to drive me at 10:07.”

“It’s fricking freezing out. I don’t want to wrap up the baby. Just stay home if you don’t want to go.”

“It’s the Valentine’s party!” I held up my sack of valentines: hearts, cut out of Post-it notes, each stuck to a Tootsie Pop. Heidi had not gotten any even though I’d put them on the list, because she hadn’t remembered to take my list. So I’d improvised. I’d written each name in my best writing, double-­checked everyone’s spelling, and added what I thought was an appropriate sticker—­dinosaurs for the dinosaur boys, soccer balls for the soccer girls, pencils or books for the ones I wasn’t sure about. “Britelle’s mom is organizing the party.”

Heidi gagged. She gagged whenever Brenda Olziewski or any of the other do-­everything mothers came up.

“Either get on the bus now or bring them in tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?! No one saves valentines for the next day.”

“Then you’d better get moving.”

“It won’t be twenty-­four hours till 10:07.”

“Maybe your fever was already gone at 10:02 but you didn’t take your temperature until 10:07. Or maybe it was 9:41. Did you think about that?”

I hadn’t, but I didn’t think you were supposed to guess about something as important as a fever. The policy was twenty-­four hours.

“If she’s not going, I’m not going,” piped in a perfectly healthy Carna.

I might have gotten over the valentine exchange, but the idea that Carna would miss a day of school for nothing was just too much for me. I tied my scarf around my face to cover my germs during the bus ride, then hid in the school bathroom until ten, checking my head with my arm in case it got hot before I reported to class.

That’s what kind of person I am. Or was, until I couldn’t be anymore.

Before New Year’s Eve, no one would have thought I was capable of doing anything besides exactly what I was supposed to do. And no one, including me, thought I was any good at lying. But maybe it was there in my genes all along, dormant, because once I got started, I caught on quickly.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Young Readers Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593530349
• ISBN 13: 9780593530344
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland