Messed Up By Janet Nichols Lynch

Messed Up is a very thrilling and attention grabbing book. R.D. is the 15 year old main character in this book. He lives with his grandmother and her boyfriend, Earl. After his grandmother leaves him and Earl, to go be with Harry, R.D. continues to mess up in school. He leaves school early one day to go sit by himself at a park across town, and decides to go home late. Once he arrives at home he finds Earl dead in the bathroom. After Earl's death, R.D. pretends to everybody in town that his grandmother is still around and Earl's just at home sick. Not many people catch on at first to his scheme to live by himself, but R.D. realizes that he misses and loves Earl very much. He realizes that if he wants to be able to live on his own, he has to straighten his life out. R.D. does everything he can possibly do to make everyone think that Earl is still alive, he even forges Earl's pension checks. After a while, people catch on and tell Earl's sister about what was going on. So if you want to know the ending to this excellent book, you will have to read it.