Among Friends by Caroline B. Cooney Read Free Book Online

Emily
.
    He picked up his pen to write an answer but he didn’t.
    All through English class he stared down at my note. Jennie was very aware of the note and who it was from. Paul’s face was different from usual: not closed off (Hillary says he has military security measures for his own face) but sad and open.
    When class ended he drifted in the halls and let me drift up to him. I said, “We’d love to have you, Paul.”
    He said, “Thanks, Emily. It was nice of you to think about me. But my family needs me at home.” He touched me—my cheek—and I looked up at him, but he was already going down the hall full speed. I never really thought about it until now, but I don’t think Paul ever touched anybody before.
    Just now, writing my diary, I realized something about that sentence. He didn’t say his family would celebrate Christmas. Just that they needed him.

    I can’t believe that of all the people in the world, I talked to Ansley Morgan. I don’t even like Ansley. I don’t like her world or her attitudes or her figure. But she apologized to me. She walked right up and said she was sorry about the fight, and that it was her fault and Jared’s, and she would go with me to the principal if I wanted andget it straightened out. She said they had been playing games with my secrets and it was wrong.
    “Yes,” I said, “it was wrong.”
    “My journal for English has turned into a confessional,” said Ansley. “You know what I mostly write down? The things I shouldn’t have done.” She slid her yellow hair out of her eyes and gave me a funny look. “I’ve got a really fat entry for you, Paul.”
    I shrugged. But I didn’t walk away from her. It’s funny. Ansley is honest. What you see is what you get. There aren’t that many people in the world you can say that about. All of a sudden I envied Jared.
    Ansley changed the subject to school sports, and then to weather, and I said suddenly, “You’re the only one who has never quizzed me, Ansley.”
    “Because I will never let anybody quiz me, either,” she said, her eyes sparkling so that for one moment she looked like Jennie. “I’m going to keep my smile and my preppy clothes and my money between me and curiosity. You’ve got a right to your privacy, Paul.”
    I almost fell off my chair at that one. Maybe she didn’t know Jared was following me.
    Then she leaned way forward, really sparkling now, and said in a very teasing voice, “Although there is one thing I’m truly dying to know, Paul.”
    “What’s that?”
    “What does the ‘R.’ stand for?”

    He actually told me. But it was sweet, not horrid. “Revere.” He was named by his real mother—that’s the phrase he used—his “real” mother—for Paul Revere. For the midnight ride of Paul Revere. “She was a real mother,” he said. “She wanted her son to have a midnight ride of his own. Cure cancer or bring peace in the Middle East or discover a nuclear deterrent.”
    His mother is dead, I thought, absolutely shaken. It’s grief and despair keeping him so solitary and so hidden. And to think we’ve teased him about all this when he just buried his own mother! I said quickly, “I’m sure you’ll do one of those things, Paul.”
    He laughed, choking on his own laugh, and looked away from me, and then I realized it’s not his mother who’s the problem—it’s him! He’s got leukemia or something and he won’t do something immortal because he won’t have time! I grabbed his arm and I said, “Paul, you’re not sick, are you? You aren’t dying or something, are you? You’re all right, aren’t you?”
    He gave me a sweet smile, and said, “No, thanks, Ansley. I’m fine.”
    Of course now I really
do
want Jared to follow him everywhere and find out what’s going on. Has somebody died? Is somebody dying? What is the midnight ride of this particular Paul Revere supposed to be, anyhow?
    O, Ansley Augusta Morgan.
    You are bad, bad, bad.
    And curious, curious, curious.
    And