The Fever by Megan Abbott Read Free Book Online Page A

to be.
    She’d thought school would be easier, busier. She was trying to get the picture of Lise out of her head. The angry crack down her face. Lise was never angry at anyone. Even when she should be.
    But now Deenie wished she were at home instead, sitting on the sunken L-shaped sofa watching movies with her dad, her fingers greased with puff pastry.
    And so she walked aimlessly, the sound of her squeaking sneakers loud in her ears. A haunted feeling to go with the hauntedness of the day.
    It wasn’t until Mrs. Zwada, silvered hair like a corona, called out to her from the biology lab that she realized that was where she was supposed to be.
    For a moment, Deenie just stood in the doorway, the room filled with gaping faces. The penetrating gaze of Brooke Campos, her useless lab partner who never did the write-ups and refused to touch the fetal pig.
    â€œHoney, I think you should sit down,” Mrs. Zwada said, her brightly lacquered face softer than Deenie had ever seen it. “You can just sit and listen.”
    â€œNo,” Deenie said, backing up a little.
    Everyone in the class seemed to be looking at her, all their faces like one big face.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she said. “I have to find Gabby.”
    She began to edge into the hall, but Mrs. Zwada’s expression swiftly hardened into its usual rictus.
    â€œThere’s going to be some order to this day,” she said, grabbing Deenie by the shoulder and ushering her inside.
    So Deenie sat and listened to all the talk of mitosis, watched the squirming cells on the PowerPoint. The hard forks of splitting DNA, or something.
    A few minutes before class ended, Brooke Campos poked her in the neck from behind.
    Leaning forward, breath sugared with kettle corn, she whispered in Deenie’s ear.
    â€œI heard something about you. And a guy.”
    The bell rang, the class clattered to life, and Brooke rose to her feet.
    Looking down at Deenie, she grinned. “But I don’t believe it.”
    Â â€œWhat?” Deenie said, looking up at her, her face hot. “What?”
    Â Â 
    Her winter hat yanked over her long hair, hair nearly to her waist, Gabby was standing at her locker. Again, with Skye.
    Until last fall, Deenie never really knew Skye, even though she’d been in classes with her since seventh grade. Skye was never in school choir, yearbook, French club, plays. She never helped decorate the homecoming float.
    But she became Gabby’s friend in that way that can happen, because the girl with the cool boots always finds the girl with the occasional slash of pink in her hair. The two of them like a pair of exotic birds dipping over the school’s water fountains—you knew they would find each other. And, about a year ago, they had.
    At first, Gabby told Deenie she liked to spend time at Skye’s house because her aunt was never home and you could just hang out, listen to music, drink the fogged jugs of Chablis in the fridge or a stewed-fruit concoction her uncle used to make in the basement and called prison wine.
    But Deenie knew it was more than that. Saw the way they’d exchange looks, how Gabby would come to school wearing Skye’s catbird ring. She worried Gabby maybe shared things with Skye, personal things, like about her dad. Things she’d only ever shared with Deenie.
    It’s like you with Lise, Gabby once said. You guys have this thing . Which Deenie guessed was true because she’d known Lise forever and Gabby only since middle school, and Lise was part of her growing up and Gabby was part of everything newer, more exciting. And everything to come.
    â€œDeenie,” Gabby called out. “What happened?”
    â€œIt was bad,” Deenie said. And then stopped. You couldn’t talk about it the way you’d talk about a pop quiz or shin splints from gym. Your words had to show how big it was.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with her?” Gabby asked. “Is she going to