Me, My Elf & I by Heather Swain Read Free Book Online Page B

I set an alarm? Is someone ringing our doorbell downstairs? The dinging continues as Ari rummages through his messenger bag. “My BlackBerry’s pinging,” he mumbles, and I wonder if he’s a little bit crazy. I mean, first off, blackberries aren’t in season and second, unless he knows some magic that I don’t, blackberries don’t make noise. But then he holds up a small machine and stares at its tiny screen. “Hey, check it out! ” he says to Mercedes. “Bella’s blogging.”
    “Move over,” Mercedes says, grabbing the thingy from him.
    I squirm in beside her so I can see what they’re looking at. “Oh wow! ” I say. “It’s like a little, tiny computer!”
    Ari’s mouth hangs open. “Are you telling me that you’ve never seen a BlackBerry?”
    “This thing?” I ask, to make sure he’s not really talking about the fruit.
    Mercedes asks, “What about a Palm Pilot or a Treo or an iPhone?”
    I just shrug.
    “Do you even own a computer?” Ari asks.
    Once again my face burns with embarrassment. I’m starting to think I’ll go through the rest of my life here looking like I have permanent sunburn. “I’ve seen computers,” I tell them. “Sometimes we went to the library in the town nearby to use them.”
    “Whoa,” Ari says. “It’s like you’re Amish but you’re not.”
    I look away from the BlackBerry and stare out the window like Willow. Blackberries, boysenberries—everything I understand is so different from what’s here.
    Ari comes to stand next to me. “Hey, so what, Zephyr. It’s no big deal. Actually, computers are a huge pain in the ass. Mercedes doesn’t have one either.”
    “Shut up, pandejo . That’s not true. My parents both have laptops.”
    “Yeah, but you don’t personally have one.”
    “I’ve seen a freakin’ PDA before,” Mercedes says.
    Ari sighs. “Jeez, Mercedes, I’m trying to make her feel better, you nimrod. Get it?”
    “Oh, I get it all right, pinche pito de pitufo . Make the Puerto Rican girl seem like a bass-ackward loser so the new girl doesn’t think she’s all alone. My family didn’t just row over from the islands, you know. Both my parents are lawyers.”
    “God, Mercy, don’t get all ACLU on me.”
    “Are you guys really fighting?” I ask. My breath gets short and my head spins. We don’t speak to each other like this in Alverland unless someone is extremely angry, and then watch out because the spells start to fly and someone is going to end up looking like a toad.
    Mercedes is the first to stop. She punches Ari on the arm, then smiles broadly. “Nah,” she says. “Just giving each other a hard time. Let’s see what our little enemies have to say today.”
    Ari holds up the small screen so all of us can look at once. “Whenever Bella and her clique start blogging, I get pinged.”
    “Most people just have a MySpace or Friendster page with a blog, but Bella has to be special ,” Mercedes says in a whiny voice. “She has her own Web site. I heard her daddy hired the same company that designed Britney Spears’s Web site. Which is, you know, totally gross because Britney is such a ho dog and a has-been.”
    “And of course Bella has a blog, because who doesn’t have their own blog these days? I swear my cat could have his own blog,” says Ari.
    Bella’s pretty face stares out at us from the screen while soft music plays in the background. Next to her picture is something she wrote, which I read through quickly.
    BAPAHS is the coolest school on earth! We just found out that in two weeks the O’Donnell Casting Agency is holding auditions for a new ELPH camera Web ad at our school. I can’t wait to audition for this part. I’ve done a few TV commercials and had a few small speaking roles on TV and in movies, but I would love the opportunity to work in Web-based advertising.
    “What a load of crap!” Mercedes says. “If you want the real story, you have to go to the secret blog.” They both grin.
    “There’s a