Fire With Fire by Jenny Han, Siobhan Vivian Read Free Book Online Page A

here, Kat!”
Kat walks directly in the center of the barn, careful not to
get close to any of the stalls. “Dude. Can’t we hang out somewhere else? It’s rank in here!”
I take a deep, long breath. “Are you serious? I love the
smell of manure!”
Kat, looking skeptical, takes her fingers off her nose and
gives a sniff of the air. Then she starts to gag. “I’d stop telling
people that if I were you.”
“Fine. There’s a trail that runs down by the coast that’s
pretty. No one else is out riding. We can walk it.”
“Sure, whatever,” Kat says, gasping for breath. She turns
and runs back for the barn entrance.
I put Phantom’s finishing brush away and give him a kiss
before I leave him. Outside, it’s practically dark, and kind of
cold, but Kat and I start walking anyway.
“I called Mary,” I tell Kat. “But I’m not sure she got—”
“Guys! Wait up!”
We turn and see Mary, running toward us. “Sorry I missed
your call, Lillia. I fell asleep. I always take a nap after school.”
“Aww,” Kat says.
Delicately I say, “Is everything okay at home? Your aunt
was kind of weird when I called. I didn’t think she’d give you
the message.”
Mary sighs. “Aunt Bette’s on some kind of New Agey tear
lately. She’s more into books and crystals and stuff than interacting with actual people.” She shakes her head. “So what’s
up? Is everything okay?”
I guess the three of us have only ever hung out when we
were scheming up revenge plans. Or when we had urgent
business to discuss. Except all that’s over with now.
“Nothing much,” I say. “I just missed you guys.”
Kat eyes me. “How’s things with Ren?”
“Not great,” I say. And that’s all. I mean, I want to let it
all out. I want to tell them how much it sucks right now, but
I can’t. Kat went through exactly what I’m going through.
Even worse. So who am I to complain?
But Kat is surprisingly sympathetic. She pats me on the
back and says, “Don’t worry. Someone else will piss her off
and she’ll forget about it. Hey! It might even be me!”
“And you’ll always have us,” Mary says.
I smile at them both. “Thanks, guys.”
After that it’s kind of quiet. It’s not uncomfortable silence,
exactly. More like we don’t have much left to say to each
other anymore. Which maybe we don’t. It’s still nice being
with them, though.
CHAP
TER SIX
    When the bell rings at the end of third period,
I head to the library instead of to calc, because the guidance
office is offering a workshop for seniors to help them fill out
their college applications.
    I’m almost positive it’ll be a waste of time. I’m going earlydecision Oberlin, and the materials are pretty straightforward.
A basic application and a personal statement about who I am
and why I want to go there. It should be a cakewalk.
    But after my less-than-awesome SAT scores this summer, I
need to pull out all the stops. It’s a fucking broken system. With
the SATs, there are tons of tricks about how to answer questions
that can bring your score up hundreds of points. That’s why rich
kids end up doing so much better than poor kids, because they can
afford special classes that shit where they teach you those secrets.
    It’s not like I could ever afford a private tutor, so I got a
bunch of books out of the library. Some of them were super
outdated, and some dumb-ass had actually filled in the practice
tests in pen. I did the best I could, which clearly wasn’t enough.
I plan on talking about that in my personal statement, actually.
Oberlin is a super-liberal, progressive place. I feel like they’d
jive on my lower-class angst. Regardless, I’m going to have to
take them again next month, and hopefully improve my score
by a couple hundy.
    If there are any secret guidance counselor tricks I can learn,
anything that will make my application to Oberlin rock freaking solid and stand out over all the others, I need to know them.
I’ll do whatever it takes to get