Viola in Reel Life by Adriana Trigiani Read Free Book Online

the footage of him from the God’s Love charity day. Does he have a girlfriend? Find out. Andrew refuses to ask anybody about Tag’s love life, which has slowed my reconnaissance efforts to a standstill. Only YOU can get to the bottom of Tag’s private life, and I know you’ll be stealth. Keep me in the loop. Love, Viola, aka Violet Riot
    I’m a little late to pick up my class schedule, but not so late that anyone notices.
    The lines inside the Geier-Kirshenbaum auditorium are long. The longest are for admission into the gut courses: Blog This; TV & Me, from Lost in Space to Lost ; and Makeup for Theater. These are probably all easy A’s but it doesn’t matter. You can’t sign up for them until tenth grade. The freshman class assignments were made prior to our arrival. All we have to do is officially register and by lunch we’ll know where we have to be.
    “Whatcha got?” An upperclassman takes my computer printout of my classes from my hand. She’s very Upper West Side of Manhattan. Casual. “Wow. You got Dr. Fandu for horticulture.” She whispers, “We called it ho-hum.”
    “Great.”
    “I’m Diane Davis.” She extends her hand. “I hear you have a video camera and that you make movies.”
    “How did you know that?”
    “Your profile.”
    “Oh yeah, right. I forgot about that.” Now I could kick myself for being so eager to share my interests on the school Facebook page. What was I thinking? It’s private of course, but not private enough if Diane could get her hands on it and then act all chatty with me about the information I put there.
    “We could use your help for the Founder’s Day events.”
    “Founder’s Day? It sounds lame.” I shrug.
    Diane throws her head back and laughs. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. We could use your expertise.”
    “Well, okay.” I agree to help, but I feel like she sandbagged me. The only thing I’ve signed up for officially is the pizza club.
    “I’ll email you,” she says and walks away.
    Marisol joins me with her schedule. She looks down at her list of classes with the books needed for each in bold letters beside them. “You wanna go to the bookstore?”
    “Sure.”
    I follow Marisol out of the auditorium and down the stairs to the bookstore in the basement. We have most ofthe same classes, so we each pick up a plastic basket in the front of the store and, with our computer printouts as guides, begin to fill them with the books we need.
    “I don’t know how they can call this a store. It’s a storage room with shelves in a basement,” I complain.
    Marisol gives me a copy of The Poems of Gwendolyn Brooks and an anthology by the poet Rita Dove. “And even paperbacks aren’t cheap,” I tell her. “They’ve got us right where they want us—we have to shop here. We can’t drive to the mall.”
    “We can’t drive period,” Marisol reminds me.
    “Besides the point. Don’t you get it? We’re retail hostages at this school.”
    “We’ll survive,” Marisol says. We load our math textbooks into the plastic baskets.
    “Marisol, may I ask you a question?”
    “Sure.”
    “Do you ever have a bad mood?”
    Marisol laughs. “Yeah.”
    “It doesn’t seem like it.”
    “Everybody has bad moods,” she says practically.
    “But what about you?”
    Marisol looks up from her list. “I’m a survivor.”
    “You are? How, exactly?” For a moment, I imagine Marisol swinging from ropes on an obstacle course ona reality television show. I bet she could win; she has guts.
    “Well, I’m Mexican and in Virginia, there aren’t too many of us. So I had to learn how to make friends with people who might not normally know or like any Mexicans. It’s sort of a challenge to me to make friends.”
    “No way.”
    “I’m always sure to speak first, and be friendly. And if I click with someone, I try to support them. You know, like I do with you and your camera work.”
    “That’s very mature,” I say thoughtfully.
    “It’s not hard to be your