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    Ducky: Diary One
    Ducky: Diary One
    Ducky: Diary One
    Ebook124 pages1 hour

    Ducky: Diary One

    By Ann M. Martin

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    About this ebook

    Ducky’s old buddies have changed, leaving him feeling alone . . . Maybe he doesn’t need guy friends anyway
    Sophomore Christopher McCrae has been called “Ducky” for as long as he can remember. It wasn’t his choice, but it fits because it’s weird and funny, just like him. Ducky’s nickname has not changed, but other things have: His best friend, Jay, has started hanging with the Cro Mags—the kind of guys who spend their energy picking on guys like Ducky—and his other friend Alex is always spaced out and moody.
    Hanging out with his new friends Dawn, Sunny, Maggie, and Amalia has been cool, but he misses the connection to his guy friends. His parents are in Ghana for a year, and have left him alone with his older brother, Ted, who is gone most of the time. When Jay throws a party and invites Ducky and Alex, Ducky thinks things might be turning around. But when the night takes an unexpected turn, Ducky realizes it’s not so easy to reconnect with his old friends.
    This ebook features an illustrated personal history of Ann M. Martin, including rare images from the author’s collection.    

    Ducky: Diary One is the 5th book in the California Diaries, which also includes Amalia: Diary One and Sunny: Diary One.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateMar 25, 2014
    ISBN9781453298121
    Ducky: Diary One
    Author

    Ann M. Martin

    Ann M. Martin grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. After attending Smith College, where she studied education and psychology, she became a teacher at a small elementary school in Connecticut. Martin also worked as an editor of children’s books before she began writing full time. Martin is best known for the Baby-Sitters Club series, which has sold over one hundred seventy million copies. Her novel A Corner of the Universe won a Newbery Honor in 2003. In 1990, she cofounded the Lisa Libraries, which donates new children’s books to organizations in underserved areas. Martin lives in upstate New York with her three cats.

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      Book preview

      Ducky - Ann M. Martin

      Feb. 12

      Saturday is Valentine’s Day.

      So we will be allowed to celebrate it at school TOMORROW, Friday.

      Unless you don’t have a Valentine. Like me.

      Then you don’t celebrate. You walk around feeling sorry for yourself. You might as well stay home.

      But look on the bright side, McCrae.

      Tomorrow also happens to be Friday the 13th.

      So maybe having a Valentine is unlucky. And the best thing to do is go to school and don’t worry.

      You will not worry.

      You will not worry.

      You will not worry.

      During Homeroom, F the 13

      Tucked into a Looseleaf Notebook

      The place is a zoo, and it’s all my fault.

      Flowers everywhere. Teachers acting like kids. Jason tongue-wrestling with Lisa out in the hallway.

      JAY, not JASON.

      JAY.

      JAY.

      I hate this. You know somebody for years—he’s spent a whole LIFETIME with one name, and all of a sudden BOOM he decides another one is cooler. So now you have to THINK every time you see him, and then you have to call him a name that doesn’t fit, sort of like calling a telephone a toaster—BUT god forbid you don’t, because he’ll get mad at you, and of course it would NEVER OCCUR to him or anyone else to wonder if you mind being called Ducky, a name you didn’t CHOOSE, because you’ve always been known by it and besides, it’s better than the name the Cro Mags used to call you, Bambi—and hey, CRO MAG is a nickname YOU throw around, but that’s just a DESCRIPTION, because those muscle-head jocks DO act like prehistoric Cro-Magnon cavepeople—plus, when you think about it, Ducky fits anyway because it’s weird and funny and so are you.

      Anyway, congrats, McCrae. You did V day RIGHT this year.

      You did not:

      …Stay home and hide, like you wanted to.

      …Let big brother Ted talk you into a blind date, like the one two years ago with Shelaigh, who wore more makeup than clothing and whose greatest talent was rolling her eyes, tapping her feet, and looking at her watch in three different rhythms.

      …Write every single girl in your class a poetic love note, like you did in seventh grade, causing many of them to gang up against you on the playground and three parents to call Mom & Dad complaining you’d broken their daughters’ hearts.

      …Make Mom a Valentine’s Day card with so much glue that it stuck to the kitchen table and she got mad at you so you flushed the chocolates you were going to give her down the toilet and clogged it up, ruining the whole day for everyone…that was fourth grade, I think.

      Nope, Ducky old boy, you’ve learned the hard way. You don’t need a Special Someone. Today you were EVERYONE ELSE’s Special Someone.

      With style.

      The fake halo made of twist-ties, the bow and arrow slung over your back, the big basket of carnations—brilliant. All that was missing was a marquee out front—Christopher ‘Ducky’ McCrae IS cupid!

      The girls LOVED it. Especially Sunny, who planted a big wet one on your lips, then actually threaded the stem of the carnation through her navel ring and flashed it around, until Mr. Dean came out of the office. Dawn put HER flower in her long blonde hair and spun around, doing some folk-dancey thing that made her peasant dress spin out. Maggie kissed hers and said she would write a song about it.

      Giving flowers to the TEACHERS—that was the best idea of all. From the look on Ms. Patterson’s face, expect an A in math this semester.

      Okay, so not EVERYONE was amused. Mr. Dean couldn’t decide whether to throw you out or laugh. And Alex sort of looked right through you (that thousand-yard stare of Alex Snyder). And the Cro Mags, of course, had a field day, grunting and scratching and passing nasty comments to each other. You have to take the good with the bad.

      But here’s another big change. A year ago, McCrae, the Cro Mag comments would have killed you. A year ago, you worried about their opinions. You wanted them to be your friends. HOW many years did it take to realize THEY WERE GOING TO MAKE FUN OF YOU NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRIED TO BE LIKE THEM?

      As if you ever could.

      So…if you can’t join them, do exactly what they hate. Like dance past them, singing all you need is love, and toss them a flower—then watch the look on Marco Bardwell’s face the moment after he catches it and realizes his apelike friends are NEVER going to let him live it down.

      Ducky, you may be strange but you are a genius.

      If only JAY hadn’t gotten so bent out of shape. JAY, being one of your oldest friends, should KNOW your sense of humor, but obviously he doesn’t, because he acted like you handed him a dead squid and muttered, Do you ALWAYS have to make a fool of yourself?

      Do you?

      Do I?

      Even Later That Afternoon

      In Math Class, to Be Exact

      I.

      I.

      I.

      Why do I call myself you all the time? This can’t be normal. Only I don’t know, because to figure out what normal is, I’d have to read other people’s journals and I’m not allowed because Vista requires you to keep yours PRIVATE, to provide you with a personal learning experience, but it WOULD be nice if you could at least see A LITTLE of someone else’s, because soon the world will be full of Vista students with piles of unread journals and that seems like such a waste of both paper and interesting stories.

      What it boils down to is this: writing I is creepy. TOO personal. You feel self-conscious. You worry about how you come across. But with you, it’s like you’re another person. It’s just easier, that’s all. It’s easier to be someone else.

      Here comes Ms. Patterson. If she sees this, I’m toast.

      2B cont.

      Home at Last

      Still Depressed

      But Not Toast

      I wish I hadn’t written that.

      The part about being someone else.

      I’ve been thinking about it all day.

      It’s kind of pathetic, in a way. Like you can’t stand being yourself.

      I asked Sunny about this. I asked her if she ever wanted to be someone else.

      She said she always wants to be someone else.

      Which is RIDICULOUS because she’s great exactly the way she is (I told her so), but she just said that if I were in her shoes—if MY mom had cancer, if MY dad spent all his time at the hospital and at his bookstore—I’d be pretty upset too.

      I shouldn’t have opened my big mouth. I shouldn’t have used the word ridiculous. I know the pressure she’s under. I’m the one who found her that night at Venice Beach, alone and scared, dumped by that guy she wanted to run away with. OF COURSE she thinks about being someone else. Her life is no picnic and I WOULDN’T want to be in her shoes.

      But the thing is, even though I’m NOT in her shoes

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