Empress of the World by Sara Ryan Read Free Book Online Page B

you.”
    Katrina blushes for no apparent reason. Then she asks, “Are they going to do one of those ‘Dad gets the boy, Mom gets the girl’ things?”
    Isaac opens a desk drawer and slams it shut. “They’d better not.”
    “One of them might want to move away,” Battle suggests quietly.
    Before Isaac can respond, Katrina jumps in. “That’s exactly what happened with my ma, she couldn’t get far enough away from my dad. It sucked having to leave New York, but I was already kind of in the middle of an identity shift, and then when we got to Santa Fe, nobody knew anything about who I was before, so I got to be whoever I felt like being.”
    I wonder what Katrina was like before her parents got divorced. I wonder how she dressed. Right now, she’s wearing a white Oxford cloth shirt over a blue glitter tube top, a Catholic-school-uniform-looking green and red plaid skirt, and purple motorcycle boots. And she has glow-in-the-dark plastic skeleton earrings.
    Meanwhile, Isaac is pondering the new identity idea.
    “I’ll be a jock—drink lots of beer and treat women like shit! Oh, wait—to be a jock you have to have athletic ability. Damn.”
    We’re laughing. Isaac continues: “I’ll grow my hair out and get a guitar and write sensitive songs about love and death and the fate of the planet. Being completely tone-deaf wouldn’t get in the way, would it?” He pauses to gulp down more Coke, and then goes on: “Now I’ve got it! I’ll wear badly fitting clothes, overeat, carry a really thick book, and hold forth about the continuity problems on last week’s Star Trek! That always gets the chicks.”
    “Ooh, baby—the thicker the better!” says Katrina.
    Battle and I shriek, and Isaac says, “What’d I tell you?”
    “The book! I meant the book! Jeez, you guys!” Katrina grabs a pillow from Isaac’s bed, throws it at him, and misses. He hurls it back, and it hits her right in the head.
    “I dunno, Battle—I think we ought to leave,” I say, grinning.
    Battle says, “You got that right.” We get up and start for the door.
    “Bye, guys!” calls Isaac, scooping up the pillow in preparation for another strike. “Come back any time!” He starts to close the door. Then Katrina pushes past him and says, “Let’s talk more later—right now I need to have a serious discussion with my girls here.”
    Isaac’s face falls. I’m the only one who sees it, though. He closes the door.
    Katrina starts in on us immediately, although she can’t keep from laughing.
    “Very funny, you two. I say one thing—just one thing—”
    I say, “Katrina, just face it. He’s hot for you.” Battle nods.
    Katrina rolls her eyes. “That is so unlikely. You heard him—I remind him of his friggin’ baby sister! It’d be about as likely as the three of us getting the hots for each other.”

June 27, 11:37 p.m., My Room
    “Bye, you guys—see you soon,” I say, and put the receiver down. My ear is warm. I must have been on the phone with Mom and Dad for over an hour.
    I don’t remember anything they said.
    Or anything I said.
    Earlier tonight, I tried to write my objective description for class tomorrow. Ms. Fraser said that we could describe anything: an object, a place, a person—the only requirement was that whatever we chose had to exist in the world somewhere, it couldn’t be made up. It’s supposed to teach us how important it is to be unbiased when you’re describing an artifact.
    I always write things out in longhand before I put them on the computer, so the ripped-out page from my notebook is still crumpled into a ball on the bed.
    I was just about to tear it up when the phone rang. I pick it up, uncrumple it, and look again at what I wrote.
    Battle Hall Davies is sixteen. She lives in North Carolina. She has long blonde hair and eyes the color of leaves in spring. She is 5’7” or 5’8”. She wears jodhpurs and riding boots, not because she has a horse, but because she likes the style. . She has