Pandas on the Eastside Gabrielle Prendergast ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS
One Journey Wind Song My neighborhood the Eastside is about the unlike liest place on earth you would ever think to see a panda But life is full of surprises Some people call the Eastside a slum That’s because they are describing buildings and roads instead of people To them people on the Eastside probably look poor sad uneducated sick and worthless But I don’t care what they think To me the people around here are friends Kellie Rae on the corner who Mom tells me to ignore She gives me dimes to buy Popsicles Those guys who sell stuff I’m not allowed to even see much less think about buying They call me Singalong let me take their pop bottles back and get snippy when their 1
Gabrielle Prendergast customers litter And Kentucky Jack Contrary Gary and the rest who sleep on the street until well into winter If it weren’t for them I wouldn’t know any swearwords at all And I think a girl called Journey might need high-quality swear words one day That’s right Journey is my name Journey Wind Song That’s pretty much all I know for sure about myself Mom sometimes says I’m part Viking but Kentucky Jack who has never by the way been anywhere near Kentucky says I look just like his cousin’s girlfriend and she’s pure Indian through and through and never been off the rez Kellie Rae always says Aloha to me and tells me I must be a Hawaiian princess or something Mom has red hair and freckles so obviously there was something going on with my dad that gave me the black hair but this is one of the things Mom never talks about Mom tells me all kinds of other stuff I’m sure I don’t need to know She tells me about the war and about the prime minister and his pretty wife and about all the weird ingredients in orange soda But she never tells me anything about my dad 2
