Crystal Caves by Kristine Grayson Read Free Book Online Page A

I do? I wouldn’t have anyone to talk to. I actually am making a place at school. I’ve got friends, even if they aren’t exactly warm and fuzzy, and they can’t finish my sentences like Tiff and Brit. My friends are at least helpful, and they’ve done more to keep me alive in this city than anyone at my mother’s house.
    I look over at the hotel with the globe. The hotel’s name is emblazoned across the front. For a long time, I thought the “trump” in the name was bragging. Like, you’ve trumped someone else for being in that hotel. I said that to Melanie and she laughed at me and corrected me, telling me the hotel is owned by some guy named Trump and he puts his name on everything, and it is kinda like bragging and trumping only really déclassé. I actually had to look up that word on my phone, and I decided I liked it. I could achieve a really snotty tone, and say everyone was déclassé.
    That hotel is supposed to be really fancy. All of the hotels around the park are. There are good hotels in Manhattan and “fleabags” according to Veronica, which I guess have fleas or something. The fleabags are dangerous and cheap and for tourists only. I know there are hotel sites on the web where I could look all this stuff up, because I’ve seen them advertised. (I’ve been watching too much TV, and Tiff is wrong: you don’t learn everything from TV, just enough to get by, kinda.)
    Maybe I won’t go home. Maybe I’ll just march over to Trump whatever and give them my credit card and run up a big bill. I imagine it for a minute, going home every night to some fancy room…with a TV and room service…and it wouldn’t be that different from the apartment, except it wouldn’t have the staff and the stupid boys.
    I sigh. I’d be even lonelier in the hotel.
    I finish the first knish and am too full to start the second. But I want it, and Mother would hate it if I get fatter, and to hell with her, and I eat it, licking my fingers when I’m done. I feel a little queasy, but I also feel triumphant.
    I have a really nice room and some friends, and I have to stay here until we all meet for the winter holidays. I know Tiff and Brit would be mad at me if I show up at their places, and their mothers would have fits if I sent plane tickets or something to some other city where we could all meet. I mean, if the mothers got mad at iPhones, imagine how they’d feel about paid vacations?
    I could run away all on my own, like those heroines in the movies, the ones who seem stronger because they have adventures. I could take my magic credit card, and go all over the country, and do good or just see how different America is in real life than it is on TV.
    Mother would be fried—at least, once someone told her I ran away. She’d probably be relieved too. It would be the excuse she needed to disown me.
    And when she disowned me, she’d cut off my magic credit card.
    I let out a breath of knishy air. I have a room, I have friends sort of, and I have unlimited money.
    If I don’t try to impress Mother and if I ignore Megan, I might be able to stick it out until the winter holidays.
    That feels like a real decision, one I’ve made all on my own, maybe for the first time in my life.
    And instead of feeling good, it feels…scary. My heart’s pounding like I’ve run a race or something, and I want to look over my shoulder to see if someone was watching me while I was sitting here thinking.
    Or if someone has read my mind—or my emotions.
    I glance around looking for Megan, but she didn’t follow me to the park. Which is good, because I’d’ve given her what-for if she had.
    She’s not part of my life anymore.
    I’m just going to hang on and pretend to be the perfect daughter at Mother’s (whatever that means), the perfect student at school (if I can), and the perfect friend to M, V, & A.
    I’ll do what I have to do to survive.

 
     
     
     
    FIVE
     
     
    MY RESOLVE MAKES it all the way to dinner. Which, Tiff would say,