Autumn Falls by Bella Thorne Read Free Book Online

taking a sip of milk. “She just … you know … hinted.”
    Erick puts his hands to his temples. “I sense that Schmidt is going to beg for meat loaf.” Sure enough, Schmidt starts to whine. “It’s inherited. I’m a genius.”
    “You’re a loser,” I say. “He’s been doing that since we sat down.”
    “Your grandmother always had some wild ideas, even before the stroke,” Mom says. “You can’t believe them. Your father was gifted in a million ways, but not the way Eddy likes to think.”
    I let it go. But when I go up to my room, I take out the journal and flop down with it on my bed. I stare at the triangle face on the front. It’s such a strange image. It looks like a child could have scrawled it, but it’s intricate too. Like hieroglyphics.
    I pull open the cover. Nothing special inside at all. If I searched hard enough I probably could find this exact same journal at the mall. Most likely that’s where Eddy found it, on a Century Acres bus trip.
    Still …
    I grab a pen.
    I don’t want to keep a diary. I’m not the diary type.Jenna’s wish-list idea doesn’t seem right either. There’s only one reason I’m even interested in this journal, so there’s really only one thing it feels right to do.
    Dear Dad,
    I know you’re not connected to this thing, and it’s not like you can actually read it, but I miss you. A lot. So much I’m even willing to write. I know. I’m guessing you feel extremely honored.…
    I always write slowly, so it takes forever, and I can pretty much guarantee that ninety percent of the words are spelled wrong, but I tell him everything. I write more than I’ve ever written in my life.
    It feels good.
    It shouldn’t. It’s a journal, not my dad, and part of me feels like a sap for getting so into it … but screw it, I like writing to him. When I feel like I’ve said everything I want to say, I think again about Jenna’s wish list idea. This time it makes me smile and I add one last sentence.
    I wish just one thing here could be easy.
    I close the book and feel absolutely fantastic for exactly one minute … until I look at the clock.
    It’s midnight and I haven’t even started my homework.
    I am an idiot.
    I might be a prophetic idiot, though, because over the next two weeks,
exactly
one thing is easy. I have a pop quizin French that I hard-core ace because it’s all oral conversations in front of the class. No writing at all.
    The rest of my life? A giant ball of stress.
    Classes at Aventura are a million times harder than the ones at Stillwater, and there’s so much reading that I’m up late into the night, every night. Amalita and J.J. have been great. One or both of them usually hangs out with me after school, and we all work together either at the outdoor courtyard at the mall or at one of our houses. Jack sometimes hangs too, but he’s distracting because he’s apparently some kind of supergenius. He finishes everything while he’s still in class, so while we’re all trying to work, he’s quoting his favorite panels from whatever comic he’s reading.
    As for the journal, I don’t have time to write anything as long as my first entry. I carry it with me, though, just in case I have a second to jot something down. I’m fully aware that carrying a journal is a prime setup for disaster, but I can’t help it. It makes me feel good to keep it close.
    There’s one other thing that has me stressed out, and I finally bring it up one day at lunch.
    “Check it out,” I say. “She’s staring at me.”
    “She who?” J.J. asks.
    “She
Reenzie
.”
    They all follow my gaze across the field and look right at her.
    “Stop it!” I hiss.
    “Yeah,” Jack says. “You don’t want to look her in the eye or you’ll turn to stone.”
    “A Medusa reference,” J.J. says. “Impressive. You read that in a Greek mythology comic book?”
    “Bite me,” Jack says as he checks out a pretty girl with blond pigtails walking by us.
    “Dios