text: Being seven years old stinks! This evening I was supposed to go to the soccer club pizza party, but I’m grounded for failing a test in school and trying to lie about it. I wouldn’t have been able to go anyways just for failing the test but I still didn’t want to miss it if I could help it! Wendy Green was going to wear her new JoJo Siwa watch and Taylor Gates was bringing her Glitter Girl doll in a new outfit, and I have to miss seeing them! And it’ll be so embarrassing to explain why I couldn’t go! Mom and Dad are out on a date tonight so I’m stuck at home with a babysitter. Of course, I’m not the baby. My little brother is, but the fact a babysitter comes to my house would be another thing I’d be embarrassed to tell my friends. But secretly I think she’s super cool. The babysitter’s name is Allison. She’s fifteen years old ! She just started high school! She wears makeup and does her own hair, which she’ll help me with sometimes when my baby brother doesn’t need much attention. She has a smartphone with Snapchat! Mom and Dad won’t let me use Snapchat, but when Allison’s over and after she takes care of my brother, we take selfies and use the filters and stuff. Then she sends the pictures to me. She’s learning how to drive, but she says she can’t take me anywhere by herself until she has her license. She even has a boyfriend ! But my brother is taking up a lot of Allison’s time this evening. He didn’t settle down until I was in bed myself so we couldn’t do the fun things we normally do when she’s over. I can’t wait to be a grown-up so I can do what I want. I won’t get grounded for failing a test. If I know everything by now, I imagine I wouldn’t even fail any more tests by the time I’m in high school. I won’t need a babysitter. I won’t even have to live with my parents and baby brother if I didn’t want to. I could use Snapchat. I could drive, go on dates, and to pizza parties whenever I want. I’d go to bed anytime I wanted too. When I wake up the next morning, I turn on the lamp and see I’m not in my own room. My My Little Pony comforter is not on my bed and my dolls and stuffed toys aren’t next to me. No other toys are to be found anywhere in the room either. Instead, I see a dresser scattered with makeup, jewelry, perfume, and hairstyling things. Some clothes lay around the room that look bigger than me. Have I become a grown-up already? I get out of bed and start shuffling across the room. My body isn’t moving with my own control, which is confusing and scary. But I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and see Allison’s face. I’m in her body! Allison shuffles to the bathroom and turns on the shower. While in there, she shaves her legs! It seems so easy to her but thinking about a razor makes me worry about cutting my skin off! When she gets out and dries off, she puts some face cream on a few pimples. Eww! But she puts makeup on a while later and she has the pretty face I recognize. The pimples are hardly noticeable too. When its time to go, Allison gets to practice driving on her way to school, which isn’t as easy as I imagined. There are so many things to keep track of: the car’s speed, the mirrors, the dashboard meters, the signals, the signs and lights, other cars on the road. On top of that, her mom in the passenger seat was more nervous than leaves in a wind storm the whole time. She was constantly fussing at Allison to stop, slow down, use the turn signal, or watch the blind spots. It’s overwhelming! They pull up to the high school in one piece though--thank goodness--and Allison gets out. I don’t see what her mom was so nervous about. I never noticed how big the high school is, or even been this close to it until now. Allison must’ve gotten the hang of it by now but I’m afraid I’d get lost. She makes her way down the halls to her locker. I wish we had lockers in elementary school. We have just as many books and crap. First thing in the morning, Allison is in a class called algebra. Its like a math class but it uses letters. I thought just learning how to do multiplication was hard. It looks like algebra uses all kinds of math. Her teacher reminds the class about a test at the end of the week and passes back assignments. Allison’s paper has several teacher’s marks on it and I can tell she’s nervous. I guess you can even fail tests in high school. Over an hour later, a bell rings and Allison goes to another classroom. This time, English, one of my favorite subjects! I’m one of the better readers in my class, I’m a decent speller, and I enjoy the vocabulary activities. Except, in Allison’s English class, she’s working on a ten-page research paper on a current issue--whatever that means. And ten pages, holy cow! The whole class period, Allison was on the internet researching something called her thesis, writing things on notecards, and then typing an outline. I thought writing my book reports were tough! Allison’s lunchtime is almost like mine. The school lunch even looks a lot like what we eat at my school. In a crowded cafeteria she eats and talks with her friends and her boyfriend until time for the next classes. I guess they don’t have recess during lunch in high school. Allison goes to a class called homeroom after lunch. While there, her class is instructed to take something called career assessments. They’re like personality quizzes, where they ask if you would rather buy and sell stuff, or study or build something. You choose whether you wanted to do that the most or the least to answer the questions and, in the end, it suggests the best things for you to do after high school. The fact that Allison and her classmates are taking quizzes for that seems a little funny to me. When you’re around my age, all the time people ask what you want to be when you grow up. When a kid answers that question, I think sometimes we want to do what our moms and dads do or we just think a job is super cool, and we think a lot of things are super cool too. To me, playing soccer, creating outfits, and teaching a class all seem super cool, so when I grow up, I want to be either a soccer player, a fashion designer, or a teacher. Do kids in high school forget what they want to be when they grow up? What if the test says they should do something different? Most of the choices on those quizzes all seem super cool but only one could be the answer. How do you choose? I only have about eight more years to figure this out... The school day finally ends after a few more hours and classes. I thought that Allison would have the time to do what she wants now, but she had to call and talk to her mom first. “Can I go with my friends to the ice cream place?” She asked. “Who’s going?” Her mom asked back. “Candice, Sarah, and Ella,” “What about your homework?” “It’ll get done, Mom!” “If you fail your algebra test, you’ll be grounded,” Her mom warned. “Can I not have a little fun, Mom?” “Stop it, Allison Kenzie! Don’t forget curfew or you’ll be grounded sooner.” Wow...Allison does some super cool grown-up things, but she still has to do homework and pass tests. She has pimples and has to shave. And she has to talk to her parents before going out with her friends and has to be home at a certain time. I guess life doesn’t get any easier in eight years.