Besides my friend, EuGene ("Gene") Princeton-Peoples, I have anther close, good friend in Melinda Suzanne Mulligan, who is 13
years old, like me and Gene. She is in many of my classes at school, and she also happens to be my neighbor.
She lives across the street from me. I see her every day (UNLESS her family goes on vacation or unless they go camping for a few days).
Melinda has blonde hair that is long and wavy, but it is lighter than mine is; and it is THICK. She wears a headband to keep it out of her face. Her eyes are brown and big, and her nose is nice and straight; and her smile is quick and sure; but she doesn't smile all that much, as she is rather shy around people she doesn't know. Melinda USED to wear braces on her teeth, but she got those removed about 6 months ago, and she really has pretty teeth now!! (How I wish I had MY braces off; I STILL have AT LEAST 2 more years to go with MINE!! UGH!!!!) She also used to wear glasses, but now she wears contacts; and she really feels better about her appearance.
Melinda is as quiet as I am noisy, and she is as content being by herself as I am being with a gang of kids for a game of tackle football. She doesn't care that much about sports excepting for maybe track and field, which is something she excels at. She is one of the best runners at school, and she is as fast as a cheetah.
In fact, that's what the kids at school call her: "Cheetah".
But other than that, she prefers to do things like reading, drawing, writing stories or poetry, or writing in her personal journal. She is just not that sociable of a person.
But that is okay. Melinda is still a nice person. She is thoughtful and considerate of others, and she loves her family as well as her friends. She doesn't like to hurt people's feelings or make them feel bad; and she especially doesn't like it when others are bing teased because she gets teased herself about being adopted.
That's another thing we have in common. We are both adopted. I was adopted when I was nine, four years ago, and Melinda was adopted 3 years ago, when her mom died; and her aunt and her aunt's husband took her and her younger brother, older sister, her, and her youngest sister in as their own, to join THEIR 3 natural children, making for a total of 7 kids in the family. And, like her, the youngest child, a girl of 5 (at the time), was adopted from Vietnam.
Since then, two more kids have joined the family: two sisters from Louisiana, ages 9 and 15 now. (The two Louisiana sisters have something in common with one of MY sisters: they are my one sister's BIOLOGICAL sisters!!) So it's like we are somehow "connected". It's really weird.
Melinda wants to be a writer of children's books when she gets to be an adult. Her favorite books are the ones by Ann M. Martin ("The Babysitter's Club" authoress, plus she's written other books) and Beverly Cleary ("Ramona", "Henry Huggins", etc.).
