Nothing to Lose by Alex Flinn Read Free Book Online Page A

know what I want.”
    She glances out the window at Biscayne Bay. I think about how it’s the first time I’ve seen the bay since I left last year.
    When Angela looks back, she says, “It’s all right not to know. It’s okay to be afraid, too. But at some point you need to take a chance, let someone help you.”
    “I don’t know if I can do that either.”
    She turns to the computer on her desk and pulls up a calendar program. “Is nine o’clock good for you?”
    “Huh? Nine o’clock when?”
    “Same time, Thursday. Does that work for you?”
    “Yeah, but....”
    She takes her hand off the mouse and looks at me. “I want to help you, Michael. But I don’t have time to sit here and not talk to you. It seems to me you need to do some thinking. Come back Thursday?”
    Today is Tuesday. I nod.
    “Same time?”
    I nod again. She picks up one of her business cards, writes down the appointment, and hands it to me.
    “Sometimes you need to have the guts to trust someone, Michael.”
    I take the card from her.
    “I used to trust a lot of people,” I say.

LAST YEAR
     
    So the next day, after my attempted assault on Dutton, I was back in the cafeteria. It was St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday that must have been invented by Bennigan’s. The place was awash in every shade in the puke spectrum (worn by guys with Irish names like Jose ), and the lunch ladies were serving corned beef and cabbage.
    Irish eyes: Not smiling.
    I should have worn green. Lately my efforts had been concentrated on blending with the crowd. Usually that meant jeans and some kind of T-shirt. But today, in my blue jeans and blue shirt, I stuck out like a buoy in a sea of green.
    I was eating pb&j again. I’d brought three sandwiches to have something to do. I remembered this Peanuts strip where Charlie Brown says lonely people eat peanut butter, and if you’re really lonely, the peanut butter sticks to the roof of your mouth.
    I swirled it off with my tongue.
    “You’ve got the right idea.” Julian put his tray down across from mine. “I should bring my lunch instead of eating the stuff they sell here.” He gestured toward his Styrofoam tray full of corned beef and cabbage. “What is this anyway?”
    I ignored him. That was, after all, the reason I sat in the cafeteria instead of outside: No explanations required here. Guys like Tris, they got mad if you didn’t answer their questions. Someone like Karpe was so used to being blown off, he probably didn’t even notice.
    “Does your mom make your sandwiches?” he asked.
    “What do you think?”
    Karpe didn’t react to my annoyance. That would have destroyed his credibility as a wannabe. “I think she did, lucky guy. At my house, it’s just me and my dad. We eat manly meals in manly ways—we’re lucky if we take the lids all the way off the cans of baked beans before we ingest them.”
    He laughed at his own joke. I’d never met Karpe’s dad. When we were friends, he’d lived with his mom, a working mother like mine. I wondered now why he’d moved, but I didn’t ask. Probably it was because of that “male influence” people always worry about.
    In Karpe’s case, it hadn’t worked.
    I considered enlightening Karpe that bringing a sandwich wasn’t exactly my choice. Walker kept a tight leash on Mom, letting her buy groceries once a week with his ATM card, but policing her other spending so even a buck-twenty-five cafeteria lunch would be noticed. That’s why I brought my lunch.
    The weird thing was, I actually considered telling Karpe that—even if it was just for a second. Tris, or any of my other, more recent, friends, I wouldn’t have told in a quadrillion years. I told myself it was because I didn’t care what Karpe thought. But was it that?
    I said, “Why are you sitting with me?” Karpe wasn’t wearing green either.
    “Hey, this was my table. I always sit here.”
    “Oh.” I felt oddly disappointed, then wondered why. Was I so pathetic I actually worried whether