The Symptoms of My Insanity by Mindy Raf Read Free Book Online Page A

chair, pretending not to hear Jacob’s guttural, seagull-like laugh, and the boys whispering “knockers” in bad Spanish accents, and wishing I was small enough to fit inside that open pocket of my backpack.
    See Mom, I’m wearing my new bra, they’re supported properly, but it doesn’t change anything.
    Why did I think for a second that Saturday was going to be an actual date with Blake? It’s obvious that guys are interested in me for a good laugh and that’s all. Jenna’s right, Blake just asked me to go with him because his mom made him. She probably said, “Blake you should invite a real art student, somebody up for the Italy scholarship. Wouldn’t that be nice for Jillian?” Yup, I’m just an art buddy for his sister.
    Señora announces that we’ll be spending the rest of class working in pairs on our cultural research projects. Meredith Brightwell’s my partner—well, my silent partner, since I do most of the work—and we’re doing our project on thisColombian artist named Botero and his awesome, colorful paintings of people who are … well, really fat.
    “Hey, Izzy.”
    Meredith’s dragging her desk over to mine carefully, as if not to chip her nails, which are done in that French style Allissa tried to do on me once. My nails ended up looking like I was attacked by a bottle of Wite-Out. Meredith’s nails look pretty, though, and I see she’s still wearing that tiny gold ruby ring she got for her thirteenth birthday. I was always amazed how the red in the gem was almost the exact same strawberry shade as her hair. I wonder if she’s grossed out by the paint manicure I always have on my nails.
    “Hey,” I say back. And then we flip through our Botero books in silence.
    I’m not super-sad about not being friends with Meredith anymore. We just kind of naturally grew apart. It’s strange seeing someone every day though who used to be your best friend. I met Meredith in first grade, when I was desperate to try out this new prank kit I got for my birthday with fake vomit and snot. So I sat down next to her and faked a huge sneeze, making tons of gooey prop snot appear in my hands. She started crying so hard, she had to leave class. When my mom made me go over to her house that night to apologize, I showed her how to fake vomit, ended up sleeping over, and we were basically inseparable until about seventh grade. That’s when she made lots of new friends who didn’t seem to want to include me in anything. Also, that’s when I gotmore interested in art than whose lunch table at I sat at.
    “You should tell Jacob to just shut the hell up. That’s what I do.”
    Meredith’s smiling at me in such an unusually friend-like way, it impedes my motor skills; I drop my Botero book to the floor.
    “Don’t let them get to you, they’re such idiots,” she adds.
    Okay, why is Meredith Brightwell half whispering and smiling at me? Where’s the
Twilight Zone
music? Where’s the celebrity host and the camera crew to tell me I’m being pranked?
    I manage to nod back at her and pick up my book. Is she buttering me up to ask me to officially do this whole Botero project by myself? I ignore her and go back to my research. But just as I’m learning that Botero’s subjects aren’t of “fat” people but rather “inflated” people, Meredith half whispers to me again, “So, what are you up to this weekend? You doing anything fun?”
    Okay, seriously?
    “Um … I don’t know. Are you … up to anything fun?” I full whisper, trying to avoid the penalizing shade of Señora Claudia’s giant sombrero, since we’re only supposed to be speaking in Spanish.
    “I don’t know … maybe.”
    Wow. The last conversation I had with Meredith was the other time we were paired up in Spanish. It was for an oral presentation using food vocabulary:
    Me gusta los bacalaos. Y tú?
    No me gusta los bacalaos. Me gusta los cacahuetes.
    Which I think roughly translated to:
    I like cod fish. And you?
    I don’t like cod