Save Yourself by Kelly Braffet Read Free Book Online Page A

and deliberate.
    Toby didn’t rise to the bait. He was used to Layla. “Do you need help, Verna?” The V sound was dogged by the faintest hint of the stutter the older girl had mocked. “I have some time.”
    Verna nodded. The entire office smelled like Toby’s herbal cologne and spearmint nicotine gum. “So, how was your first day of school?” he said.
    Verna picked up a flier. Venereal Disease in Teenaged Girls: It’s Scarier Than You Think! She looked away from the word Venereal . “Good.”
    He asked about her teachers, then said he’d had Ms. Kiser ten years before, and she was nice. “Incorrect,” Layla said from the floor. “Kiser is not nice. Kiser is a dumb bitch who kisses up to the jocks and cheerleaders and completely ignores everyone else.”
    “Don’t call her that,” he said. “Say she’s got a strong personality, or that she’s a challenging person.”
    “Wouldn’t change the fact that she’s a bitch.”
    “It might change the way you look at her, which might change the way she looks at you.”
    Layla made a face. “Gee, Toby. You’re so wise. How did you get so wise? Was it the meth? I bet it was the meth.” Toby said nothing, just dropped another folder into the box. Layla turned back to Verna. “Now, Chionchio, I like. Guarda, of course, will hate you on principle. I thought he and Pastor Jeff were going to throw down at that last board meeting. It’s actually sort of ironic, because Guarda’s supermega-Catholic. Goes to St. Joe’s three times a week, gives shit up for Lent, everything. Sex ed was Hensley’s thing. Guarda wouldn’t touch it. But he’s the head of the department. So.”
    They have the right to know how their own bodies work , one of the letters to the editor had said. All they need to know is that God wants them to wait , Dad had written back. His response was still pinned to the refrigerator downstairs by a papier-mâché butterfly magnet that Verna had made when she was seven.
    “It’s not a biology teacher’s place to teach sex ed,” Toby said. “When I was in school, they taught that stuff in Health.”
    “Were you out sick the day they covered drug abuse?”
    Toby, shaking his head, said, “You can’t get a rise out of me, Layla,” and she grinned and said, “Oh, I think I could. If I really wanted to.”
    “I’m going to go tell your father we’re done,” he said, curtly, and left.
    “What a loser,” Layla said. “Doesn’t he make you want to stab yourself in the eye?”
    “Not really,” Verna said. “Are you going to help me finish these?”
    “No. Those make me want to stab myself in the eye, too.” Layla stood, picked up one of the folders, and made a face at her own image, then held it up in front of her face and Verna. “Bleah!” she said, in a monster voice, waggling the folder back and forth. “I am the Jesus zombie! I will steal your soul! And your eyeliner! And any skirts less than twenty-four inches long! Bleah!”
    Verna rolled her eyes. Layla laughed and tossed the folder back down.
    “Oh, I kill me,” she said. “Hey, Vee, by the way, speaking of death and zombies and other unpleasant things—there’s this girl at school, Calleigh Brinker? Hot redhead, legs up to wherever?”
    “I met her.”
    “Yeah, well,” Layla said. Suddenly all the humor was gone from her voice. “Steer clear. She’s Hensley’s niece. She’s also just the tiniest bit psychotic.”
    Verna wished the ground would open up and swallow the school building overnight, so she never had to go there again.
    At dinner, Dad said, “Toby said you could have been more helpful with the information packets, Layla.”
    “Toby was high as a kite,” Layla said. “I’m surprised he didn’t say I could have been a flying giraffe.”
    “Toby has a lot of wisdom to share, if you’d let him.”
    “As well as more than one blood-borne disease, I don’t doubt.” If Layla’s previous smile had been a perfect mirror of Justinian’s, the sunny one