Bethany Caleb Read Online Free PDF

her sketchbook and her Sharpie. Her pen hovered over the blank page. As the moments lacking inspiration passed, her eyes drifted upward to watch the remainder of the students enter the classroom.
    One of the senior s, Paul Hoffman, stood up and went over to the battered radio on Mr. Beck’s desk. His blue-haired head and lanky frame bent over, and suddenly heavy industrial music filled the room. Paul looked up with a grin. Bethany immediately looked toward Jody Skinner, a nerdy girl with glasses. Jody’s face was contorted into a scowl, but she appeared engrossed in her work.
    Mr. Beck finally arrived, a sheaf of papers under one arm. Bethany decided she ought to get out her painting and at least pretend like she was working on it.
    She pulled her canvas from the drying rack and selected a few brushes from the cans on the radiator, noticing when James and Genn arrived in the doorway to the art room and started making out. She noticed, and tried not to.
    Veronica Resmini had to push by them to get through the doorway. With her black leather skirt, tight black shirt, and knee-high boots, Veronica looked like a friend of Bethany’s. However, Veronica and her friends Amy Vaughn and Frank Price believed themselves to be vampires. The pointy caps on her canine teeth poking through her black lipstick disproved this belief. Veronica wore the caps on her teeth almost every day and often talked to Bethany in art class and study hall about how she was going to get dental surgery to make her teeth pointier. Bethany didn’t understand how someone could believe they were a vampire and need to make their teeth look pointy. Wouldn’t an actual vampire already have fangs?
    Bethany did not believe they were actually vampires. She had been in Amy Vaughn’s second grade class. Mrs. Caleb kept the class photo carefully preserved in a scrapbook. Second-grade Amy had long mousy brown hair held back by barrettes. She was wearing a jean skirt and pink sweater with a white turtleneck underneath. Her forced smile was missing several front teeth. Second-grade Bethany was wearing a brown corduroy jumper with a pink shirt, and her then-dirty blonde hair was braided and tied with pink bows.
    Amy’s hair had gone from mousy brown to bleached blond in eighth grade, at the same time the all-black attire appeared. But Amy had always been deathly pale and unfriendly-looking. Bethany’s transformation took place around the time of her transition to high school. She wondered if people thought she had always been weird-looking too. Probably.
    James came then, and Bethany stopped wondering about vampire teeth.
    “I hate school,” he said, throwing his bag on the floor. Bethany’s head snapped up. James was looking intense. He didn’t even sit down.
    Bethany waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, she asked, “Why?”
    “I got called down to the school counselor’s office a couple days ago, because some ‘concerned student’ thought I was cutting myself. The guy tried to get me to roll up my sleeves and everything, but I told him to fuck off and left. I mean, what the hell? They don’t have any right to examine me.”
    Bethany’s face turned red , but the pale foundation Bethany applied every morning concealed it. James walked off to get his canvas and supplies, still talking. Bethany followed him. This was all new information to her. James hadn’t been in school since last Wednesday.
    “Then today, I get called down to the principal’s office, he says some students had reported me for planning to blow up the school. I said I hadn’t, but I had to go to the school counselor anyway. You know what he said to me? ‘I know you say you don’t have any plans, but I know how hard it is for people like you’—people like me, I mean, why didn’t he just come out and say, for freaks like you. Christ! ‘I know how hard it is for people like you, and I certainly don’t want another Columbine.’”
    “That sucks,” Bethany said.
    “And