Pointe by Brandy Colbert Read Free Book Online Page A

nod and start backing up, slowly so she won’t notice I’m trying to get away.
    But Klein sees everything.
    â€œWait.” He pulls a red cup from one of the upside-down stacks, all lined up like those hats the Shriners wear. “Let me make you a drink.”
    â€œNo, thanks.” I point toward the patio. “Beer.”
    â€œOkay.” He wraps an arm around Trisha’s teeny waist. “Well, we’re gonna roll later. You in?”
    I choke down a “no fucking way” and say that I have to be up early for ballet tomorrow. Which is true. But also? Doing E with Klein Anderson and his girlfriend is about the last thing to check off of my list tonight. They hooked up with Mallory Frank at a pool party last summer. I wasn’t there but I’d believe it even if there hadn’t been witnesses. Mallory is on the fringe, one of those girls who will do anything to make her way into the circle.
    He looks at me now and shrugs. “Your choice. Hey, if you see Hosea out there, tell him I’m looking for him. Dude has no fucking concept of time.”
    He and Trisha start fumbling with a bottle of rum and a two-liter of Coke and that’s my cue to leave. My friends are no longer on the patio, but the kegs are getting plenty of action from the fringe people—like Mallory. People who are cool enough to be invited, but awkward enough to feel like they have to kiss everyone’s ass for their next invitation. I don’t know if anyone would call me, Sara-Kate, and Phil popular, but we’re cool with the people who
do
hold most of the power in our class—particularly the two messy people I just left in the kitchen.
    â€œYou look like you could use a beer,” says a friendly voice to my left.
    Eddie Corteen. We’ve gone to school together our whole lives but I don’t know anything about him. He shows up to class every day, he comes to all the parties, and he’s so
nice,
it seems like an act until you realize no one could keep that up for so long. But I can’t remember having an actual conversation with him, nothing more than hello in passing or asking him for his notes if I missed English class.
    â€œI
could
use a beer,” I say since he’s already pumping the keg. “Thanks, Eddie.”
    â€œNo problem,” he says, sort of ducking his head as he reaches into a plastic bag near the base of the keg and fills a red cup. “So how’s it going? I’ve been thinking about you.” Eddie flushes so quickly, I wonder how his mind had time to communicate with his body. His white-blond eyebrows get lost in his pinkened skin. “I mean, not like that. I just—Donovan. You know?”
    Right. He knew him, too.
    He hands me the cup and I sip. Ice-cold, hasn’t gone flat, and hardly any head. Normally I’d forgo the beer on a Friday night since I have ballet early the next morning, but after the past couple of days I deserve this. Except . . . thinking about Donovan mars the perfection of this beer.
    â€œI feel like I shouldn’t be out right now,” I say, spilling my fears to the person I probably know the least at this party, as if that makes any kind of sense. The words are out before I can stop them. “Like it’s wrong because he’s at home with his mom . . . recovering.”
    Recovering.
Such a crap word, but I don’t know what else to say. He was hurt and suffering and now he’s home and trying to heal. Maybe he can’t close his eyes without launching a thousand nightmares.
    So what am I doing? It never occurred to me to skip Klein’s party until now, but guilt coats my insides as I think of Donovan while I stand on the terrace, holding a beer and talking to people who used to be his classmates.
    â€œYou can’t think about it that way,” Eddie says in a careful voice. “I used to sit behind you guys on the bus sometimes and you . . . well, you