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

Julian Karpe liked me? “Sorry. I could sit with my friends or something.”
    What friends?
    “You can sit here. You’re sort of … less of a jerk than your friends.”
    I laughed. “Oh, thanks. What makes you say that?”
    “You make eye contact, for one thing. Guys like Ted Dutton act like they’d turn to stone if they looked at the wrong person.”
    “Okay, I’m superior to Tedder Dutton. Check.”
    “And, I don’t know,” he said. “You always picked me for your team in P.E., even after we stopped hanging together. If you weren’t captain, I got picked last, except maybe a couple of really slow girls. But you’d pick me fourth or fifth.”
    More like sixth or seventh, but, yeah. I’d felt guilty about not being friends with Karpe anymore, so I’d picked him sometimes. And he always, always rewarded me for my generosity by striking out or fumbling or kicking the ball toward the wrong goal.
    “That’s so lame,” I said. “Can’t believe you told me that. It’s humiliating, really.”
    “Yeah, I know.” He played with his cabbage. “Doesn’t matter, though.”
    “Don’t you care what people think of you?”
    Karpe shook his head. “People mostly think the same, whether you care or not.” He took a bite of cabbage.
    “So that’s also why you don’t care if that crap makes you…”
    “Flatulate?” Karpe grinned. “It doesn’t. I have excellent self-control—probably from eating all those canned beans with my dad.” He took another bite of the gray slime and finished it before saying, “Why don’t you sit with your friends anymore?”
    “I just don’t feel like it, okay? God, do you always ask questions like that?”
    “You were the one who asked first.”
    I changed the subject. “Want a sandwich? That looks like toxic waste.” I realized too late I sounded like Dutton. “I mean, I have an extra one.”
    Karpe nodded. I fished the third sandwich from my bag and handed it to him. Of course, that had to be the precise moment Tristan walked into the cafeteria. That sound you heard was planets colliding. Tristan hesitated, then came over. He looked first at me, then at Karpe. Then at the empty seat beside me.
    “Hey,” he said.
    “Hey,” I said.
    Karpe opened the pb&j and rearranged the pieces of bread so one half was all peanut butter, the other half all jelly, oblivious or pretending to be. Tristan sat down, trying to ignore Karpe but not completely succeeding. He wore a mostly green University of Miami National Champions T-shirt.
    “Missed you outside,” he said, uncertain, like a dog on his fifth day at the pound.
    I said, “Right. Like I could go back there again.”
    “You could. Dutton’s used to people busting on him. He’d get over it.”
    “If he’s such an asshole, why do you want to hang with him?”
    “Well, it’s… I mean, we have football together.”
    “Right. Football.”
    “You used to like football. You used to be okay with sitting with us too.”
    “It’s not that. It’s…”
    I stopped. Why was I arguing with him? He was inviting me back. All I had to do was nothing, and I’d have a place to sit at lunch, people to talk to, parties on weekends. I wouldn’t have to sit around worrying about whether Julian Karpe—Julian Karpe, for crying out loud, who couldn’t even eat a sandwich correctly—liked me. It would be so easy. I might even be able to beg Coach to let me play football again. Maybe not first string. Maybe not even varsity. But play. Get my life back.
    Easy.
    Except it wasn’t. Nothing was or ever would be easy again.
    “It’s what?” Tris said. “What is your problem?”
    “Could you just…?”
    Go. Leave. But I couldn’t get the words I wanted, and I was just so tired of saying what I didn’t want. I was just so tired of all of it.
    “It’s okay,” he said. “I can see from your face.”
    “What can you see? That you’ve turned into this loser who hangs with guys like Tedder Dutton like it makes you someone? Are