Switch by Tish Cohen Read Free Book Online

mention this to Lise, Bray?”
    “No!”
    “Then get going.” I wait and watch while Brayden, with great reluctance, says goodbye to his doofus friends and heads for the door. He moons me real quick before disappearing inside. Once I’m sure he’s not waiting for me to leave so he can slip out again, I head back to class.
    I hear an acoustic guitar being strummed in the music room of the Arts & Language building. So soft you can barely hear it. And if you’re thinking there’s nothing weird about a guitar being played in a music room, think again. The music teacher, Mr. Buchanan, is this really old grizzled guy who wears T-shirts with the sleeves cut off to show the muscles he might once have had. And if he ever really was a tough guy, all that’s left now is that he teaches self-defense at the retirement center on Thursday nights and is seriously manic about his instruments. No one isallowed in his classroom when he’s not there unless they feel like having, as he says in his croaky, cigar-butt voice, their “ass mown like grass.”
    For a while, it became a school-wide goal to make Buchanan mow someone’s ass. Kids made plans to, say, bang their trumpets on the hard floor one morning to completely flatten them. Once someone stuffed part of a bagel down the neck of a trombone, so Mr. Buchanan had to dig it out with a pen. The ass-mowing never happened, but only because Mr. Buchanan didn’t know who did what.
    So now he has a rule: no one enters his room when he’s not there. No exceptions. And I just saw Mr. B. in the office, trying to convince Principal McCluskey to order some kind of special mouthpieces for the clarinets, which means he’s not in his room. But he will be any second.
    Curious to see who the risk-taker is, I decide to travel the scenic route back to Spanish via the second floor. The door is wide open and there he is, sitting in the middle of the room with his back to me. I don’t need to see his face to recognize that shaggy brown hair. It’s Will.
    Very quietly, he starts to sing.
    I can’t help it; I slip into the room. He has a great voice, all raspy and soft, and though he’s singing about a girl, it isn’t sappy or boy-band in any way. It is sweet and simple and makes me melt.
    Once, in seventh-grade science class, Will and I were assigned a project. We, along with two or three other kids I can’t remember, were to plan an eco-friendly neighborhood and sketch it out on paper. One day after schoolwe worked at his house, because his father is an architect and he has this huge drafting table we could use. It was cool being in Will’s home, seeing his room with its walls covered in cork panels. He has this huge bulldog, Mack, with a face mashed in like a rotten apple. Truly the ugliest dog ever born. And while we were taking a break to eat pizza and play video games, Will started goofing around with the dog and singing to it—that old song “You Are So Beautiful.” Only Will hammed it up in this funny, screechy voice. It was adorable and beyond.
    Don’t ask me why I start thinking about that right now. I just do.
    Will has to get out of here. Buchanan will be back any second. I lean back against the wall and accidentally hit the light switch. Right away the lights go out. The music stops. Will spins around in the semi-darkness and I do something very dangerous in my nervous state. I start to speak.
    “Sorry … I was just passing by and, well, I heard you, and Mr. Buchanan was just in the office but he’ll be back, like, any second and I think you should go … like really fast. He was just finishing up with McCluskey, and if he sees you, he’ll—”
    “Andrea,” Will says, standing up and turning around. “I was working on an assignment.”
    “But Mr. B’s going to find out.”
    “I’m almost done. Just wanted to practice the chorus.”
    My cheeks flush hot. “The chorus. The chorus was, like, perfect. It was slow and fast, and so sad but so happy, you know?” I’m