The Secret Side of Empty by Maria E. Andreu Read Free Book Online Page B

other day, right?” he says.
    “Awkward and weird, yeah.” Boy, I am scoring points for sparkling conversation.
    “Awkweird.” He smiles. I laugh. He looks pleased.
    Then I look down at the journals.
    “Yeah, so, you’re busy, I just saw you and . . .”
    I really don’t want him to go, so I scramble around for a reason to keep talking. I hold up two journals, one yellow with buttercups on it, one with bluebirds in orange boxes, facing in all directions.
    “Which one?”
    He scrunches up his nose. “Hmmm . . . of those two?”
    “I know. Options are slim.”
    “Yellow flowers for sure.”
    I laugh, put the bird journal down, and hug the buttercup one to my chest. “Yellow flowers it is.”
    As he walks me over to the register, he says, “So you don’t go to Willow. We’ve established this.”
    “No, I go to the girls’ school.”
    “Oh, you’re one of the Goretti Goddesses? Is it true the nuns beat you guys with rulers?”
    “Not if they know what’s good for them. We hit back.”
    He laughs and bumps into me for no good reason, like he wants to get into a wrestling match. I wonder briefly if I could take him. That thought is followed by amazement that this super-cute guy is hanging around looking clumsy, doing a whole lot of staring at his feet.
    After I pay, we stand, all “where do I put my arms.” Someone goes by and the alarm goes off. The bored clerk waves them on without looking up. I wish for a split second that I had the guts to stuff my pockets full of eyeshadow and walk out past the detectors, all calm and cool.
    Over the noise of the alarm, Nate says, “So, Willow’s having a dance on Friday. You should go.”
    “Oh, I think my friend Chelsea said something about going.” It is a total lie, but he doesn’t know that.
    “So maybe I’ll see you there.”
    “Yeah, maybe.”
    I toss the bag, receipt, and packaging to all my new things in the trash can outside, then stuff them all deep in my backpack. I like the idea of erasing evidence. It feels like a superpower.
     
     

CHAPTER SEVEN
    “ A Willow dance, are you serious?”
    “C’mon, Chels, just this one time.”
    “But their dances are so lame.”
    It’s true. Willow Falls Regional High School dances are lame. Maybe something about their monstrously big gym that never looks full, or the DJs they get, or the way that everyone hangs out in little pockets by cliques. The all-black clad crowd—they must be the theater geeks or the art crowd—stand outside the actual gym, looking too bored to be there. The cheerleaders, who I know by sight from town football games and general cheerleaderiness, wear clothes that are too tight, topped off by too-perfect blond hair. There is always a cluster of the Antisocial Pot Smokers type there, smelling of pot. I wonder why they come at all.
    “I really want to see him,” I tell Chelsea. Of course I have told her every moment of the Encounter at the Pharmacy in microscopic detail, nanosecond by nanosecond, and we have deconstructed the code locked inside his words for an hour already. I know if we are on a boy mission there is no question she will come to the Willow dance with me.
    “I’ll go if you do something for me,” she says.
    “Sure, what?”
    “Come with me to Siobhan’s school next weekend.”
    “Oh come on, Chelsea.”
    “Why not?”
    “I just—there’s that paper, and I have a calculus test the Monday right after that and . . .”
    “Siobhan’s not that bad, you know. You can study in the car on the way back. And it’s not like you’re going to study for it anyway and you know that. Please come.”
    I am surprised that Chelsea has picked up on me not liking Siobhan.
    I really want to do what Chelsea wants. But the thought of going to see the whole college experience unfold right in front of me, like a sick little buffet of desserts in front of a homeless, hungry person, makes me want to crawl under my covers and not come out until nothing matters anymore, like when