Fall to Pieces by Vahini Naidoo Read Free Book Online

this. Instead, I say, “I’ll do my best.”
    Always easier to make an empty promise than it is to tell the truth.
    “Stop skipping school,” he says, a smile lighting up his wrinkled face, “and you can go back to being your old self.”
    And I nearly laugh, because he’s so wrong. There’s no way I can go back to being myself. Not when Amy will never move beyond being sixteen and young and stupid and stuck in this goddamn town.
    She’s dead. I know she’s dead, but it feels as if she’s still here. As if I have to stay with her.
    “I’ll do my best,” I repeat, and force a weak smile. Then I grab my bag and bolt from the room.
    I don’t want to think about who I used to be. Or who I am. Or who I’m becoming.
    I don’t want to think about lost dreams.

Chapter Seven
    E XPLOSIVE B OY IS standing by the water fountain in the tiny courtyard. I crunch over a bunch of twigs to get to him, enjoying the way his eyes grow wider and wider as I move toward him. They nearly pop out of his head when I grab his arm.
    “Hi,” I say. I pull him along, back inside the corridors of Sherwood High.
    “What are you doing?” he asks. As if he’s so fucking scandalized. But he follows me, and we’re both needles threading our way through hallways crammed with students.
    “Faster,” I say, because Mark is waiting and I need to find Petal. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”
    I’m aware that I sound like a drill sergeant, crazy and deranged. But I don’t care. I’ve already fucked up first impressions with E by pulling that whole crying act. Now I get to be my screwed-up self.
    “What are you
doing
?” he repeats.
    “I’m dragging you through the corridors of your new high school. Consider it a tour.”
    “You’re psycho.”
    “Well observed, Holmes.”
    To be honest, I’m not really sure why I’ve taken E barreling down this locker-lined hallway with me.
    I was supposed to get Petal and meet Mark out in the parking lot. We were supposed to climb into Mark’s car, Cherry Bomb, and drive straight to the barn.
    E wasn’t part of the plan. We were supposed to “Fuck him up another time,” to quote Mark. He’s eloquent, that boy.
    But I saw E and I grabbed him. Guess this is his lucky day after all.
    E says, “Could you just slow down for a second?”
    “No.”
    He could pull away from me if he wanted. I’m not strong enough to hold him in place. He wants to be here, tagging along with me.
    Drop the pretences, Explosive Boy
.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Looking for Petal.”
    I swerve down another corridor with about a million and one dust motes partying in it. Light filters through the stained glass windows. Red, blue, green,yellow. This is the older section of Sherwood High.
    “Welcome to the rich-bitch part of our school,” I tell Explosive Boy. Only the superwealthy kids receive the honor of a locker in this corridor. A locker beneath the gleaming mahogany boards that scream the glory of past students in gold lettering.
    Standing here, you can practically feel the money of generations and generations of families. Almost all of them making worthless, but well-paid, contributions to society.
    I stop moving when I’m standing beneath a board proclaiming the success of silver-screen actor Brody Ashton, who graduated in the class of ’93. I stop moving because Petal’s at the end of this corridor, crashing her head into a locker. She shouldn’t be here.
    She shouldn’t be here because the locker she’s in front of, it’s not hers.
    It’s Amy’s.
    “Stay,” I tell Explosive Boy.
    “I’m not a dog.”
    But he listens to me like the loyal hound he is.
    I march over to Petal. Tap my shoe against her shoe. “What are you doing?”
    I’m using the worst tone in my repertoire. The Nothing tone. It’s my voice pared down to the bone: no emotion, no feeling. But it sounds like a live wire, as if it could electrocute someone.
    Then Pet looks at me, and I see the pain pulling her face apart. Her