Page 94 - Active Skills for Reading Intro Book

This week's topic: peer pressure
1

It's the week before school starts.
Alicia Gonzalez is shopping for
clothes with two friends, Nina and

5 Vicki. Alicia puts on a black jacket,
turns to her friends, and says, "Hey,
what do you think?"

The girls look at her and both start
laughing. "No way, Alicia!"

10 Nina laughs. "That's a guy's jacket."
2
Alicia frowns angrily. "Yeah, well ... / like it."

"Yeah," says Vicki, "but what will people at school say?"

Alicia thinks for a moment. Then she takes off the jacket. "Yeah, you're right."

Peer pressure. we all know about it. Your friends wear certain clothes or

15 listen to certain music. You don't want to be different. So you do those
things, too.

Fifteen minutes later, Alicia is still thinking about the black jacket "Yeah,
there's pressure to follow the crowd," she explains. "If your clothes or
hair are different, people make fun of you. You know, they laugh and point."

20 Vicki agrees. "It's true. You even have to have a certain kind of boyfriend or

girlfriend! I think these rules are childish. But when you're different, you
feel like an outsider. And that's hard."

Alicia walks away. "Hey Alicia," calls Nina. "Where are you going?"

"To get the black jacket. I don't care about what others think. I like it, and I'm
25 buying it."

1 Your peers are people the same age as you.
2 A guy is a man.

Peer Pressure 93