Alien Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

expelled and you’re not going to get away with it.”
    “I’m not trying to get you expelled. I’m trying to save your life. And mine.”
    “From what? Do you think your little campaign of rumors and innuendo will kill me?” I snorted. “Think again.”
    “Are you still talking about Martin Leonard?”
    “What conversation are you having?” I shot back.
    Sean gave me cold stare. “Shut up about Martin and tell me where you got that jewelry.”
    “What do you care?”
    “Just tell me.”
    I hesitated, wondering what he would do with that information. “My mother bought it at a garage sale last spring. What does that have to do with anything?”
    “A lot. Did the person holding the garage sale happen to be someone you’ve known your entire life?”
    “She was,” I said, wondering what Sean was getting at.
    “And would that be about the time you started seeing gold diamonds in your eyes?”
    I hadn’t made the connection before. The jade necklace lay heavily on my shoulders, but I still thought this might be Martin Leonard setting me up for another fall. “What are you getting at? Are you saying that the jewelry is possessed or enchanted or something?”
    “Possessed no, more like programmed. I think our shamans gave this jewelry to us so that they would provide us with a warning. My earrings were getting warm as I came up this hallway. Weren’t yours?”
    “I didn’t really notice.”
    “How could you not notice?”
    “Maybe I had something else on my mind,” I said as I fought to keep my voice from cracking.
    “Do you really not know what’s going on?” Sean paused and gave me a searching look. “Are you crying?”
    “No! My eyeballs are sweating.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t know why I have diamonds in my eyes or why Martin collapsed on our date or why my jewelry burned me just now. And I don’t have a clue about what you’re talking about.”
    “What did you think the diamonds in your eyes were?”
    “I thought that mirrors could lie.”
    Sean’s voice became tight with strain. “Let’s just hope you’re not the Sworn Asset from the House of Beck. Our jewelry was supposed to help keep us apart. It makes sense.”
    Not to me it didn’t. I didn’t know anything about any assets or houses or enchanted jewelry and I didn’t really care. The fact that Sean could see my eye diamonds was bad enough. But the humiliation of what had happened in the classroom coming on the heels of my disastrous date with Martin and the rumors about attempting to kill him—it was too much. And now all my efforts at hiding the hallucinations had come to naught. If Sean knew, he was sure to tell Martin, and it would be all over for me at Duncan High School. Even if the police didn’t come to take me away like they had Jonathan, how could I show my face around school ever again?
    And what if the vice principal called my parents? They had never received a call from a vice principal on a behavior issue from one of their children before. I could see Mom and Dad’s shocked expressions morph into a cold disappointment. A discussion of logical consequences would ensue. Maybe I could plead with the vice principal to give me detention and not tell my parents. As I thought, I wiped my tears away with the back of my hand.
    “This is bad,” Sean was going on. “We need to see your shaman to find out what to do.”
    I wasn’t listening. His voice was a faraway drone as my mind filled with all the terrible punishments Mom and Dad might devise should they hear about this. They might take away my car, my credit cards, or my cell phone for an entire week. Riley would eviscerate me with words of contempt. It would take months to live down what had just happened in front of the whole Honors English class. Maybe there wasn’t enough time in the universe for that to happen. Today’s incident surely would cause people to believe Martin’s version of our date. I was wondering if I shouldn’t broach the subject of