The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar

they were made out of spider webs,” said David. “And there were spiders crawling all around and some other kinds of bugs, too.”
    “Gross,” said Mo.
    “So then I flipped her off,” said David. “You know, gave her the bird.”
    “Good going,” said Mo.
    “That’s when she said the thing about my Doppelgänger.”
    “What’s a Doppelgänger?” asked Larry.
    “I looked it up in the dictionary. It means the ghostly counterpart of a living person.”
    “What’s that?” asked Mo.
    “I don’t know.” He explained the curse to them, but he exaggerated that, too.
    “… And I was playing catch with my little brother and I threw the ball right to him, but it suddenlycurved in midair and crashed into my parents’ bedroom window.”
    Larry and Mo were skeptical at first, but as David went over each incident they had to admit that if nothing else, it was a lot of weird coincidences.
    “Are you sure you’re not making this up?” asked Mo.
    “You know about the beaker I broke in science class,” David reminded her. “And Larry, remember what happened to me in Spanish?”
    “That’s right!” Larry exclaimed.
    “Oh, yeah, I heard about that,” said Mo. “Your fly was down and you didn’t know it.”
    David blushed. “It was because I saw her underpants,” he explained. “Everything I did to her has happened to me. Except so far I haven’t poured lemonade on my head. That’s probably next. Oh, and I also flipped off my mother.”
    “You flipped off your mother!” exclaimed Mo.
    David shrugged.
    “I don’t believe it,” said Mo. “You wouldn’t flip off your own mother!”
    “I was just waving to her,” he explained, “when suddenly I got like a cramp in my hand, and all my fingers bent down except the middle one.”
    “No!” said Mo.
    “It was really no big deal,” said David. “It was just a cramp. Besides, it’s not such a bad thing to do, when you think about it. Why is raising your middle finger any worse than raising any other finger?”
    “It just is,” said Mo. “It’s the most horrible thing you can do!”
    “Why?” asked David. “Most people probably don’t know what it means.” He turned to Larry. “You’ve lived in other countries. Do they know what it means there?”
    “They do it differently in different countries,” Larry explained. “In Spain they do it like
this
! In Hong Kong they do it like
this
!” He demonstrated the gesture for each country. “In Italy they do it like
this
!”
    Mr. Lugano happened by at that moment. He grabbed Larry’s shoulder and said, “You’re coming with me, young man!”
    Mr. Lugano was Italian.

21
    D AVID DIDN’T see Larry again until Spanish class. “What did Mr. Lugano say to you?” he asked after class was over. “Did you get in trouble?”
    Larry smiled. “He couldn’t do anything! First he was going to send a note home to my parents telling them what I did, except he couldn’t figure out how to write it in a note. So then he told me I had to tell my parents what I did. But then I said, ‘What did I do?’ And he said, ‘You know.’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t.’ So finally he just told me not to do it again, and I said, ‘Do what?’ ”
    David laughed, but abruptly stopped when he saw Scott, Randy, and Roger coming.
    Scott, Randy, and Roger were walking down the center of the sidewalk next to the row of outside lockers. There wasn’t room for David and Larry to get by.
    David stepped aside to let them pass.
    Roger glanced at David, then turned to Scott and said loud enough for everyone to hear, “Hey, Scott, are you going out with Ginger again on Saturday night?”
    “Sure,” said Scott, equally as loud. “You and Leslie want to join us?”
    “Hey, that sounds like a good time,” said Roger.
    “How about you, Randy?” Scott asked. “Why don’t you and Tori join us?” He said the name Tori especially loud.
    “Yeah, that Tori Williams is one hot babe!” said Roger.
    “Maybe I will,”