I'd Rather Not Be Dead by Andrea Brokaw Read Free Book Online Page B

third
bottle-blonde. “He's totally into you. Who wouldn't be?”
    “Anyone with a brain?” I
suggest. For some reason, I stop myself from adding, “Oh, wait.
That wouldn't include Cooper Finnegan, would it?”
    Biting the inside of my lip, I
wander away to find myself and settle into the aisle next to her.
Cooper Finnegan's across the room, slumping like he needs a shot of
caffeine. I shake my head as I watch his eyes drift closed. “Wake
up!”
    He jerks in surprise and looks
over at me. His blinks imply he missed my arrival. He really is
tired. Or really not paying attention to me.
    The other me, thinking he's
looking at her, flips him off.
    “Sorry,” I say as he turns away.
“She's kind of strung out this week.”
    Cris watches the exchange
between the living with a small smirk. I flip him off but he
doesn't know it. Oh well.
    The class rustles unhappily as
Mr White hands out the tests from Monday. As I expected, TOM
bombed. Fifty nine points. That's failing for those of us keeping
score.
    Like a lot of other people in
the room, Cooper Finnegan frowns at his paper like there's
something wrong with it. Did he do worse than expected? Because it
seemed like he knew he was fumbling without a clue.
    When class ends, I get my
answer.
    Cooper Finnegan approaches the
teacher's desk when the room clears and holds out his paper. “Mr.
White? There's a problem with this.”
    The teacher's eyes flicker to
it, then back to Cooper Finnegan's face. “And what problem would
that be?”
    “An eighty?” Cooper Finnegan
asks.
    “An eighty?” I sprint across the
room to look at the test. “No way you passed.”
    “I know it's not up to your
usual scores, Finn, but there's nothing I can do.”
    Cooper Finnegan lets out a quick
breath. “Sir, it's at least twenty points more than I deserve.”
    “More like thirty!” I fume. “Who
graded this?”
    The teacher examines the paper.
“I don't see any problems here. I think you should stop worrying so
much about your classwork . Let yourself concentrate on beating
Yancy and getting us to finals.”
    Whoa. Did he just say what I
think he said?
    Cooper Finnegan grinds his teeth
and glowers for a second before calming down enough to speak. “Do
it right, Sir.”
    Mr. White gives him an
incredulous look.
    “If you don't fix this, I'll
take it to Principal Pauler,” Cooper Finnegan says, his voice
frighteningly steady. “And if she's too blinded by the fact she's
sleeping with you to do anything, I'll take it to the school
board.”
    The paper crunches as Mr. White
snatches it away. His red pens slashes away at it in short, angry
motions. “Fifty five points. Congratulations.”
    “Thank you, Sir,” Cooper
Finnegan replies, perfectly polite. He takes the corrected paper
and exits while the teacher sits there shaking his head in shock
and muttering to himself.
    What was that?
    Mr. White stares at the door in
shock. “Don't understand...”
    Me neither. I'd have thought
Cooper Finnegan would grab a gift like that and run with it. I'd
assumed he did it all the time. Pondering that, I follow Finn to
the physics lab, but then move him to the back of my mind as I
rejoin myself. Staring at her hasn't been leading to revelations
about the end of my life, but I don't know what else to do. I don't
even know what time frame I'm trying to recapture. Do I die
tomorrow? Next week? In twenty years?
    The room darkens as TOM starts
her writeup of today's experiment. Cooper Finnegan sits up slowly
and looks around, presumably seeing the ominous shadow too. He
reaches behind him to take his jacket from the back of his chair
and slip it over his shoulders. No one else seems bothered.
    I shiver and rub my arms as a
wind roars to life. Voices ride on it, their words
incomprehensible. It has Cooper Finnegan looking spooked. That's
probably not good. That probably means this doesn't happen a
lot.
    A face presses against the
window. A face made of fog, just like in that horror movie.
    My shivering