Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything by E. Lockhart Read Free Book Online

window.
    Goodbye, fly.
Have some good buzzing out there
.
    “Are you finished now?” Kensington.
    “I guess.”
    “Well, I'm happy to see you're making progress with your work, Gretchen. Let's move on.”

t hat afternoon, Friday after gym, I'm standing with Katya in the hall outside the locker rooms. Our hair is still wet from the showers. School is out for the day, except for team practices.
    “I have to take care of the monsters Saturday
and
Sunday,” says Katya. “My mom has to cover someone's shift at the nursing home and my dad has some conference.”
    I don't want to be home alone all weekend.
    “I could come down to Brighton Beach,” I say. “We could cart them over to the aquarium.”
    “Oh. Um. Not with all three. It's too crazy. I'm gonna keep them at home or maybe just the playground.” And she's right. With the three of them, we'd be outnumbered.
    “What about tomorrow night?” I sound plaintive. “We could go to the movies. Or you could come sleep over. My folks are out of town.”
    “I can't. My mom is leaving for work at seven on Sunday.”
    Is she mad at me? She doesn't
seem
mad at me. But she's blowing me off.
    I haven't even told her yet. There's never a good time to say to someone, “Hey, my parents are getting a divorce.” And Katya's so into her family. The Belovs are family, family all the time.
    The boys' locker room door swings open, and the Art Rats swarm into the hall. Titus, Shane, Adrian, Malachy and Brat. They're damp from the showers, geared up for the weekend. As they move past us, Shane bangs a locker hard, just to make noise, and I jump.
    Why do boys do stuff like that?
    “Friday, Friday, Friday!” Brat yells, his voice echoing down the hallway.
    Adrian slams Brat in the back with a basketball, to shut him up, and Brat doubles over, his hands on his knees.
    “I'm getting you for that!” cries Brat, turning red.
    “Get me, get me, get me.” Adrian spreads his arms wide.
    “Shut up, losers.” Titus.
    “Didn't you see him hit me?”
    “Just a tap, Tinker Bell,” says Adrian. “Not hard.”
    Brat mutters to himself, and Malachy stops next to us, looking up and down in an exaggerated appraisal. “Girls, girls, girls!” Like he's pretending to be a pimp. “Ready for the weekend?”
    “Ready as ever,” says Katya.
    Hell. Did someone just pinch my butt?
    Someone did
.
    Shane. He's right behind me, laughing.
    Why would he pinch my butt?
    Why?
    He's got a girlfriend. He barely even talks to me.
    “Keep looking fine,” says Malachy—then drops his pimp attitude in a fit of giggles. And then they are off down the hall, making noise about pizza and some movie they're going to catch at four o'clock.
    “Hell,” I mutter to Katya, digging around to find my subway pass in the crazy mess that is my backpack. “I do
not
understand what they are up to.”
    “Don't waste your energy,” says Katya.
    “Aren't they like alien beings?”
    Katya puts on some lip gloss. “You think about them too much.”
    “What else is there to think about?”
    “Drawing. Art. Literature. Politics. What to buy at the grocery store.”
    “Shane pinched my booty just now, did you catch that?”
    Katya shakes her head. “What a schmuck.”
    “Do you think it meant something?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “Maybe he was asserting his male dominance,” she concedes, “but it doesn't mean he has leftover feelings for you.”
    “What male dominance?”
    “He's marking territory, like a dog,” explains Katya. “Saying, see this butt? I can pinch it if I want. Gretchen won't do anything.”
    Now I feel like a half-wit, because I was actually flattered that Shane even noticed my booty enough to tempt his fingers in that direction. “Okay,” I say. “But I don't think Shane is usually the booty-pinching type. He never pinched it before. Did he ever pinch yours?”
    “I doubt it.”
    “Come on, Katya. Wouldn't you remember if Shane pinched your booty?”
    “Okay, he never pinched