Joe+D.

"That was Then, This is Now"

Summer Reading Questions
== 1.) Bryon and Mark are two best friends that live together in what used to be just Bryon and his mother's home. Now, Mark has moved in with Bryon because his parents both died and Bryon's mother was generous enough to take him in. Bryon is a "ladie's man" and is a pretty big guy. Mark is a mischevious and fairly small kid with gold eyes to match his hair. == ==2.) At the hospital, Bryon runs into Cathy, M&M's older sister who he hasn't seen in a while and does not recognize at first. He also meets a young kid from another town named Mike Chambers who was jumped and badly injured for nothing. == ==3.)Bryon and Charlie are pretty good friends. Bryon once dated Charlie's younger sister, and after they broke up, he was still good buddies with Charlie. Charlie lets Bryon borrow his car and get free cokes every once in a while. == ==﻿4.) At the dance, a boy that Angela Shepard, a girl Bryon used to date, hired tried to whack Mark's friend Ponyboy. Instead he hit Mark because Mark tried to get in the middle of it. == ==5.)He begins to discover that the two of them are slowly growing apart because he is growing up more and Mark is still like a kid. == ==6.)Charlie gets shot by a man that Bryon and Mark hustled earlier in pool. Bryon feels guilty and sad that he never got to thank him for letting him use his car. Mark also feels bad, but not as bad because he says that it's the way life goes. == ==7.)Mark and Cathy don't seem to like each other and Bryon discovers this as they ride in the car together. He thinks this because they aren't alike and I think Mark was jealous of Cathy because Bryon was spending a lot of time with her. == ==8.) Mark cuts Angela Shepard's hair off because of what she did to him at the dance. He did this to get even with her because she loved her hair. == ==9.) Bryon begins to find it strange that Mark is bringing in a decent amount of money out of nowhere. Unsuspecting, Bryon just tells himself that it's from hustling pool. == ==10.)Bryon gets beaten up badly by the Shepards for cutting off Angel's hair. Although he didn't do it, he takes the blame and the punishment. == ==11.)M&M runs away while Cathy and Bryon were riding with him in their car. M&M goes into a pack of his fellow Hippie-ish kids and doesn't come out. They look for him but fail to find him. They keep looking and eventually they find him at a hippie house. He had been tsking LSD and was going crazy. He went to the hospital and the doctor said he may never recover. Bryon feels horrible about what happened and because Cathy was so damaged == ==12.)Bryon discovered that Mark was dealing drugs as a source of income and instinctively calls the cops. He found out because he discovered a bottle of pills under their mattress. Mark is tried and sent to a juvinile detention center. == ==13.) Bryon now moves on and lives life numbly. He doesn't think about much, but studies more and gets good grades. He doesn't care about Cathy and he doesn't care about Mark as much anymore. ==

<span style="color: #62c149; font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif;">14.)Bryon, at the end of the book, feels alone and he feels that he's lost everything in his life that he cared about.
==<span style="color: #62c149; font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif;">15.)I thought this book was great. I thought that it could have used a better ending, but overall, it was very distinctive and interesting. I think this book tought an amazing lesson that you should aways hold on to the good things in life. It also tought that you can't always get what you want and that if you have something good, keep and guide it in the same positive direction. ==