The Other Way Around

Text copyright © 2014 by Sashi Kaufman

Carolrhoda Lab
^TM
is a trademark of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

Carolrhoda Lab
^TM

An imprint of Carolrhoda Books

A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

241 First Avenue North

Minneapolis, MN 55401 U.S.A.

For reading levels and more information, look up this title
at
www.lernerbooks.com
.

Cover and interior photographs: ©
iStockphoto.com/amygdala_imagery
(sky); ©
iStockphoto.com
/Sara Egner (cracked playa texture); © i love images/Cultura/ Getty Images (driver); ©
iStockphoto.com/spxChrome
(notebook paper).

Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std 10/14.

Typeface provided by Linotype AG.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kaufman, Sashi.

The other way around / Sashi Kaufman.

pages cm

Summary: To escape his offbeat family at Thanksgiving, Andrew West accepts a ride from a band of street performers who get their food and clothing from dumpsters, but as he learns more about these “Freegans” he sees that one cannot outrun the past.

ISBN 978–1–4677–0262–1 (trade hard cover : alk. paper)

ISBN 978–1–4677–2404–3 (eBook)

[1. Runaways—Fiction. 2. Street entertainers—Fiction. 3. Homeless persons—Fiction. 4. Mothers and sons—Fiction. 5. Family problems—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.K16467Oth 2014

[Fic]—dc23

2013017670

Manufactured in the United States of America

1 – SB – 12/31/13
eISBN: 978-1-4677-2404-3 (pdf)
eISBN: 978-1-4677-3988-7 (ePub)
eISBN: 978-1-4677-3989-4 (mobi)

For Dad and the shared Love of stories

When do girls fart? I know guys let it fly basically all the time. Any time it's funny, when they feel like it, as a weapon, to clear a room. But girls don't seem to do this. In fact if anything girls seem a lot more attuned to avoiding anything that smells bad. They have a lot of products directed towards this purpose. But they have to let it go some time. Everyone does, right?

The whole topic has become a lot more interesting to me since I've become one of a handful of male students at St. Mary's boarding school. It actually stresses me out a little bit. I mean, I've never been one of those people who enjoyed gassing people with my flatulence. Most of the time when I fart, it's in the bathroom. But at St. Mary's there's only one bathroom that's designated for male students, and it's on the first floor next to the custodian's supply closet—which is, incidentally, also the boys' locker room. So I've become kind of a furtive farter, letting them fly in the hallways and then moving swiftly from the scene of the crime.

Back when I was in public school, I knew this guy Rick who called that crop-dusting. He was my lab partner in seventh grade science class, and he used going to sharpen his pencil or
getting a drink as an excuse to wander the classroom and let the gas fly. It was actually kind of funny to watch people react and accuse each other after he had just passed by. I'd probably be the one blushing and shaking my head.
It wasn't me, man, not me.

You might think ending up at an all-girls high school would be a guy's idea of heaven, but it's not that simple. Sure, they're everywhere; brushing up against me to get to their lockers, flipping a silky ponytail in my face as they file out of homeroom, or even worse, adjusting their clothes—skirts hiked up and shirts unbuttoned as they walk out of class and buttoned back up when they walk in. I have to keep my eyes on the floor unless I want to walk around semi-hard all day. All day I'm surrounded by girls my own age. The problem is not that they're mean or rude to me, or that they resent me for infiltrating their arena of female empowerment. The problem is that they don't see me at all. They sweep past me every day, immersed in conversation, captivated by one another, and totally oblivious to my human presence.

Alex explained it to me this way. “You're like a floor model, Andrew West.” For some reason, Alex insists on referring to me by my full name, as if there were more than ten other boys at St. Mary's—much less other Andrews. “You're like a cardboard cutout version of a typical male. They see you, you're acceptably groomed, decent to look at, you'd probably fit in with anyone's living room décor, but you're the display model. And let's be honest, no one really wants to go home with the display model if they can afford something better. It's nothing personal, Andrew West.”

“How is it not personal?” I asked.

“This is a cloistered life they lead here at St. Mary's. Boys
are something that exists on the outside. The fact that there are a few of us here on the inside doesn't really change that idea. You're not so much male as you represent the males.” He sighed loudly. “Unfortunately that makes us brother figures or best friends with bad acne. They'll confide in us and befriend us. You might even get one to practice making out with you if she gets drunk. But they'll never date you. We've seen too much. You know what I mean?”

“Kind of,” I said. “Not like you care anyway.”

“True,” he agreed. “I have no interest in the female of the species. I suppose in some ways it's worse for you. At least I don't have temptation waved in front of my face every day. No offense,” he added, giving me a cursory once-over.

“None taken,” I said, blushing furiously.

He explained the concept as we changed into our clothes for gym. The custodian's closet was a big enough space for the three of us. Alex, Willem Beech, and I are the only male students in the sophomore class. There are a few others in the freshman class, but they don't have gym at the same time as we do.

Willem always changes quickly. He stands in the corner and throws his clothes on and off with lightning speed. This is both a function of his shyness and his eagerness to get back to whatever fantasy or science fiction novel he's reading at the time. Willem reads all the time. He reads under his desk in class, walking through the halls, and at his solitary table at lunch. The cafeteria is a brutal place to be friend-lacking. For a while I mooched off Alex's popularity, silently sitting with him and his friends on odd days and on even days eating as I walked to the school library. I didn't think anyone noticed until
I sat down with Alex one day and he winked and said, “Must be Thursday.” Willem's father is the gym teacher—a fact I frequently compare to my own situation. It's hard to decide which is worse; being the unathletic son of the gym teacher or the unstudious son of the headmistress.

Due to my age, this is the first time that I'm attending school at the place where Mom is working. When I wasn't directly under her wing, it was easier to act like it was the system that was failing me and not the other way around. But at St. Mary's, I'm like an ugly red zit on Mom's otherwise smooth skin. Mom was headhunted by this school—at least that's the way she likes to put it. They needed someone to oversee the integration of male students. It was conveniently inconvenient. Mom said St. Mary's was a chance at a fresh start for both of us. For her that meant the chance to be in the top position at a fairly prestigious high school and for me, I guess I was supposed to embrace the opportunity to blossom into the Rhodes scholar everyone seemed to believe was lurking behind the years of mediocre report cards. I was at St. Mary's so she could monitor my studies more closely in these critical “college preparatory years,” as the brochure described. Nancy West is not going to have a son who doesn't attend college—this I'm well aware of. Unfortunately for her, her first year as head of a new school is a bad time to take a sudden renewed interest in her son. For both of us.