Shug by Jenny Han Read Free Book Online

“Mama isn’t that great at sewing, Shug. You should have known better. Bring your bathing suit to me.” I retrieve it from the wastebasket, and Celia sews the hole up tight. If Celia had been home last night, this never would have happened. I don’t know if I’ll ever wear my one-piece again, but I feel better knowing that it’s back to the way it’s supposed to be. Almost.

chapter 8
    The first time I ever saw Elaine Kim, she was standing at the bus stop wearing a white parka. She had on a fuzzy white hat, and her hair was sleek and hung straight down her back. Her boots were the kind I wanted, tall with furry white trim. I knew right away we were meant to be friends.
    I said, “I like your boots.”
    She smiled at me and said, “Thanks. I’m Elaine. I just moved here from New York.”
    Then I said, “New York? Wow. You must really hate Clementon.”
    “Yeah, pretty much.”
    I said, “Me too.”
    She said, “Really? Where are you from?”
    “Clementon.”
    She laughed.
    We sat together on the bus, and by the time we got to school, we were like long-lost sisters.
    I will always be grateful that I was the first one at the bus stop that day, that it wasn’t Hadley Smith or Mairi Stevenson who saw her first. If they had seen her first, they would have recognized her inherent coolness and snatched her away. They would have plucked her off the tree like perfect fruit and made her one of them before she even had a chance to see me.
    I’ve never been one of the supercool girls at school. In sixth grade I was allowed to sit at the cool lunch table, and I was even invited to Mairi’s Friday night sleepovers, but only because Mairi’s mom always made her invite us girls from the neighborhood. Now that we’re gonna be in junior high, I doubt the old rules will apply. Mairi will invite whomever she wants to invite. I know she’ll want to invite Elaine. This is because Elaine is special; she is clearly one of them. But she chooses to stay by me.
    Some days it feels too good to be true. It’s like my days are numbered, like one day soon, she’ll realize that I’m a nobody just like Sherylin. One day Elaine will realize that she made a colossal mistake picking me, that she shouldhave chosen Mairi and Hadley after all. But today is not that day.
    Today we are buying new school supplies. I look forward to shopping for school supplies all summer. There is something thrilling about fresh notebooks with blank pages and brand-new Magic Markers and clean erasers and fancy fountain pens. Mama lets me buy one new fountain pen per school year because she knows how important it is to me. If you want to write well, you need a fountain pen. You just do.
    Mama gives me twenty dollars for school supplies and warns that I’d better bring back the change. I try to battle for twenty-five, but she tells me I’d better hush before she turns that twenty into a ten. I hush up quick. Before she can change her mind, Elaine and I ride our bikes over to the drugstore.
    Elaine has her mother’s credit card. Money is a funny thing. I never really think about it until I am standing in a store with a crumpled-up twenty and Elaine has a shiny silver credit card and can spend to the high heavens. Not that she would, and not that her parents would let her, but the point is, she could if she wanted to.
    I know exactly what I want to buy: one blue fountain pen, two black pens, five binders (one for every class), twopacks of college-ruled loose leaf paper, one box of watercolor markers, one box of mechanical pencils, and if there’s enough money, one bottle of Wite-Out.
    Elaine doesn’t care about school supplies, and she gets restless as I debate the merits of felt tip pens versus roller ball. As soon as we came in, she threw a pack of ballpoint pens and a couple of notebooks into our cart and proceeded to follow me around with a bored look on her face.
    “The roller balls are thirty cents more, but they really do write smoother. And the felt