The Rule of Won by Stefan Petrucha Read Free Book Online

that’s
my
line, but math was never a big problem for me. “Are you kidding? Not at all?”
    â€œNon, mon ami, je ne devrais avoir à,”
she said.
“C’est la Règle.”
    â€œI don’t speak Italian.”
    â€œFrench. No, my friend, I shouldn’t have to. It’s the Rule.”
    In spite of myself, I was doing that face-scrunching thing big time. Was she pulling my leg? Would I look like an idiot if I believed her?
    â€œWell, maybe, but studying wouldn’t . . . hurt, would it?” I sort of stammered it out in a way that reminded me of All-den.
    Erica pursed her lips. “Oh, but it does, like a hot stick in the eye. I’ve studied until I’m blue in the face and gotten nothing. Writing, meditating, I can handle. This is much, much better.”
    â€œWell, good luck with that.”
    â€œWhy, Mr. Dunne, don’t you believe?”
    I shrugged. I still didn’t buy the magic
if you want it, here it is
part, but was it really totally stupid? It brought a bunch of people together, and now they were all at least thinking about the school in a good way.
    â€œMaybe in some cases. For math? I don’t know.”
    â€œBut you’ve read the book, right?”
    I rolled my eyes. “Not yet.”
    A dark, wry smile crossed her features. “Caleb, why are you in the Crave?”
    I blew some air through pursed lips. “To open my horizons?”
    â€œGood. At least you’re not just trying to impress some ex-girlfriend who’s running for president so you can get back together with her.”
    My brain shot right past the whole sarcasm thing. “What do you mean,
ex
?”
    Erica went back to her writing. The rest of the trip was quiet.
    When I got home—home being a one-bedroom apartment in a subsidized housing project, with a dozen locks on the door—the place was empty. It’s a little dark here later in the day, but they’d fumigated recently, so at least the roaches were gone. Mom got home from work late so often I was forgetting what she looked like, and Grandpa Joey, well, you never knew whether he’d be around or not. He runs his own auto repair shop in town. Sometimes he’ll spend all night working on a car, sometimes, despite his honest streak, he won’t show. Drives his customers nuts.
    Maybe that’s why business wasn’t so good.
    I cracked some windows to let out the bug-spray stench, then, again for the hell of it, chanted, “Screech Neck High will get more funding” a few times.
    It felt stupid, so I started singing it to the tune of “American Idiot” by Green Day. That was kind of fun: “Screechneck high will get more funding—dehdehdehdehdehdehdeh.”
    Even that got tired fast, and I figured I’d done my part for the day. When it didn’t work, no one could blame me.
    I had no homework, and that damn book was sitting on the table where I’d left it since the previous week, so I picked it up, hopped on the couch, and opened to page one. That wasn’t really for the hell of it. I wanted to be able to tell Vicky I’d at least cracked it open, and yeah, by now I was curious. I mean, the thirty million people who bought it couldn’t be totally out of their minds, could they? Maybe
some
of it was okay.
    I thought Vicky had been making fun of me when she’d said it was an easy read. Nope. Not only were there plenty of pictures, it was also printed on thick paper with huge type, which made the book look a lot longer than it actually was. I also felt like I’d already read most of it, since everything Ethan had said was practically a direct quote.
    Yadda-yadda-yadda, people ruin their own lives with negative thoughts, yadda-yadda-yadda, you can have it all, yadda-yadda-yadda, imanifest your mesmories, yadda-yadda-yadda . . .
    I was halfway through when a voice called out, “Caleb!”
    My heart nearly lurched up into my eyeballs. A