Break Every Rule by J. Minter Read Free Book Online Page B

Boy
should
be—not too easily ruffled, you know what I mean? I looked at newspaper headlines and flipped absently through a few more news-oriented magazines. Then I saw it out of the corner of my eye, but what caught my attention wasn’t even the fact that it was
New York
magazine, it was who was on the cover. I knew that face.
    And it wasn’t mine.
    I moved, as calmly as possible, to the stack of
New Yorks,
and picked one up. The clerk was discussing some sort of political event with one of his customers, and so I slunk into the corner and braced myself for a real look. I looked that cover photo right in the eye.
    My friend Arno Wildenburger was staring back at me, positioned jauntily in front of a dark kind of club scene. His brow was arched, the way it alwaysis when he wants to convey that he gets a lot of girls, or that he knows more about vintage tennis shoes than you do, or something else like that. Lest the significance be lost on me (which was not really even a possibility at this point), the headline
Arno Wildenburger: The Hottest Private School Boy Manhattan Has Ever Seen?
was scrawled across his midsection.
    I must have been staring at it kind of gape-mouthed for longer than I thought—to me, it felt like time was standing still—because the clerk started yelling at me.
    â€œHey, are you going to buy that or what?” he was saying when I finally looked up.
    I didn’t handle this gracefully, I’ll admit. I put down the
New York,
and ran out of the Universal without saying anything.
    When I got back onto the street (where it was a totally unfairly beautiful day) the whole Arno-as-HPSB thing seemed like a bad dream. It was totally possible—it was entirely possible—that this was a printing error. I mean, it was a weekly, and their star reporter was out getting tanked with teenagers the night before she had to file her story. There were bound to be mix-ups, right?
    I headed across Union Square toward the bigHay & Royals there. You had to figure that, in all their corporate four-story glory, not a single printing error could make it in there. But by the time I charged through their doors, and stepped onto the escalator, I was feeling distinctly less optimistic.
    The magazine aisle was full of kids ditching class and aspiring writers reading the table of contents of various obscure literary journals. I grabbed ten copies of
New York
and went to sit in the coffee area. I ordered a venti Americano, black, and found a relatively private table near the window. That way, if things got really shitty, I could always throw myself out of it.
    Every single issue of
New York
had the same cover, the same table of contents, and worse yet, the same cover story complete with photographs of Arno, Rob, and David partying. One particularly unjust caption read, “Wildenburger and his friends get down at Lotus, where they are always on the list.” What was this,
Star?
It was like pure fiction.
    I
got them on that list.
    I mean, we’re talking about Arno Wildenburger here. I’ve known the guy since I was, what, eight? He’s good-looking, and girls trample all over each other to get a little attention from him, and the guycan dress. (I should know.) But the guy isn’t a taste maker, and he’s not the brightest bulb. (I should know that, too.)
    I sipped my coffee and wished I could go back half an hour, to the person I was before I learned of this huge cosmic mistake. I decided there was no way I could handle school today, at least not until after noon. Then I called Patch. I guess I wanted sympathy, but when I heard his voice on the line I realized that he was not the person to understand about Hottest Private School Boy.
    â€œWhat’s up, J?” he said. He sounded a little down, too.
    â€œI just wanted to see if you were cool,” I said. “I mean, good. You went MIA this weekend, and that hasn’t happened in a long time.”
    Patch didn’t say