Excerpt from Sleepovers by Ashleigh Bryant Phillips, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She said I was a real artist. She really liked everything I'd paint. "Good color choice," that's something she always said. She said that on my self-portrait. That's also when she told me I was beautiful. "See," and she pointed to my face and said, "This is just beautiful."

Miss Katie made me want to be a teacher. She taught me so much. And I wanted to tell her goodbye. I wanted to tell her how nice I think she is and thank her for all she's done and ask her if she thinks we'll ever see each other again.

I wanted to give her a gift. I wanted to paint her a painting. A thing called a still life, of opening spring flowers, but she never even got around to staying around here long enough for me to see any spring flowers open. And I didn't want to ask Grandma for a canvas. Grandma wouldn't even let me explain what a canvas was. She said, "None of that mess."

So I stole some paper from school and did a self-portrait at night in my room in the dark. I had to try it over and over again for a while like that until it came out good. Because I couldn't really see what all I was doing, but I got the hang of it after a while. And that's what I wanted to give her, the self-portrait I did, because it had gummy worms on it, floating around my head.

Miss Katie asked me what was my favorite restaurant and I said that even though I love McDonald's, and McDonald's has toys 'cause my cousin Terri works there and she brings them to us from her work, I have never been to the Golden Corral. I've seen the commercials and I don't even know where it is around here but the TV says that the Golden Corral is all you can eat—it's buffet. Kayla says she's been there and that buffet means the food never goes out. You can eat until you're so full you're about to pop. Kayla says if I ever go, to try the BBQ pizza. She says you wouldn't think it, cause it sounds gross, but she says it's so so good.

Miss Katie said she'd never gone to the Golden Corral, but she said that she'd take me someday. I told her I heard we can put candy on our ice cream there. "I'm sure," she said. She said she'd put gummy worms on her ice cream. And I just wanted to know if she could tell me when I went out to the bleachers to find her and give her my self-portrait when we were going to go to the Golden Corral.

But when I got out there, I saw her on the phone and I didn't want to interrupt. I listened behind the gym, heard her talking some real bad stuff. She was saying, "This place is a shit hole." And, "I'm just so alone here." And she told her friend that we'd made her a 7Up cake. Miss Katie was kinda laughing then. She said she spit the cake out in the bathroom. She said 7Up cake was some country shit.

I can't believe she said that. I mean she told us that she loved the 7Up cake. And it really is so good. We never get it except only on special occasions when Sammy's mama makes it. We all love it so much when she makes it. It's my favorite cake.

Miss Katie said the swimming pool here doesn't even have a diving board. I'd never thought about that before, but she said it so mean. And she said she was scared of getting robbed. She was shaking her head and getting frustrated. "Yeah, you're right," she said. "Helping. Yes. They needed me." Yeah she did show us things, but I never knew that we needed any help.

Miss Katie started crying on the phone and I remembered my sister. She'd be crawling into the fridge at night when she was hungry, when she won't supposed to be looking for something to eat. It hurt my feelings to hear Miss Katie talk like that. And I want to tell her that I don't ever want her to come back here again because I hate her.

Excerpted from Sleepovers by Ashleigh Bryant Phillips. Published by Hub City Press. Copyright © 2020 by Ashleigh Bryant Phillips.