Jude, 13, is a verbal kid, ready to take on the world if he has to - and he has to and he does.
A lot to say... it might be better not to say it but people like to talk, don't they?
Writer’s note
Jude will narrate the action for you and he will report what people say without quoting them directly. Yes, it is Jude's version of events but that's exactly what it is: Kid Jude.
Jude takes on the gossips and the flirts of his 8th-grade class; they try and make it their business to get in the middle of the relationship he's got with the boy that he likes. The shouting matches he has with them, where he patiently tries to explain that it is none of their business, often take place in the middle of class. That will get him sent to the vice principal's office every time.
Passage at Amazon Kid Jude
The beginning of the story…
I TELL them not to judge me.
They sit there, judging me. They look away, they look down, or they look at me. And I know what all of them are doing.
They claim they are on your side but that's not the way it is.
The 8th grade has a long way to go, I can't even think about high school. I'm a boy named Jude, 13, and I'm not happy about what's going on.
No matter what I say to them, it comes back worse next time I hear about it. They start making things up that they add to other things. The story gets all turned around until I feel like nothing is going right.
I know I am going to explain it to them again. I also know what they are going to do with it. They go off and talk about you behind your back, like the words you said to them have no meaning until they decide how it works against you.
Before I try and tell them anything, I am going to tell you everything that there is and then you will know. On the off chance you hear something later on, you already know the real story because you got it from me.
The main thing I want to say is not what happened but what has been going on in my head. That's the part that nobody cares about. They just want to know some dumb thing that never happened in the first place but they heard that it did. It's not even their life. They don't have some great reason to know all this.
I am going to tell it to you because I want to. I've got to tell somebody who isn't one of these other people. I know you don't know them. That's good. You aren't going to go talking to them.
I think I trust you. Therefore, I am not going to hold out on you.
It's pretty simple. If you think about what people spend all their stupid time worrying about, it's who likes who. I like this guy named Christian. I met him at this school when we were 7th-graders.
I thought that people would forget about it over the summer and that 8th grade would be different. All they did was use the summer to come up with more things to say about him and me.
They don't say anything intelligent. They just say exactly what you think they say. One of the main ones is when me and him are going to break up. They want that really bad for some reason, like it's going to improve their own life so much when we finally do.
It's not gonna happen. And that is something I want you to know. Me and Christian liked each other from the start and we still do. Oh yeah, me and him talk about the things they say. It bothers him as much as it bothers me.
Christian, though, keeps his mouth shut. But he tells me he likes it that I argue with them because he knows that one of us has to. If you say nothing, then the truth belongs to them. They are dumb enough to actually think that.