Between Us and the Moon Read Online Free PDF

it’s hidden by green leafy trees and purple hydrangea.
    “Aunt Nancy still smell like Bergdorfs?” she asks. There’s a wet click as Ettie removes her retainer. “Because band camp still smells like band camp except now they pay me to wash down the lake boats instead of being forced to ride in them. Thank God for day camp; I hate playing the cello for these brats.”
    I appreciate that she is trying to keep the conversation light.
    Silence.
    “Well, it’s only eight weeks. I didn’t even get to Hilltop for a chocolate frozen yogurt blitz before I left. I feel cheated,” I say.
    “Yeah . . . ,” Ettie says, but it’s guarded.
    “What?” I ask.
    Silence.
    “Ettie?” I press.
    “IsawhimtwonightsagoatHilltopCreamerywithBeckyWinthrop. I’msosorry”—gasp—“Itriedtocallyoulikeninehundredtimes—”
    “What was he doing tutoring her at a creamery?”
    “Um . . .”
    “I know he likes Hilltop,” I say, “but that’s kind of ridiculous. He could have at least brought me an ice cream before breaking up with me.” Might as well be glib.
    Silence again.
    “Hello?”
    “Bean, they were kissing,” Ettie says.
    “Becky Winthrop? Yeah right. Kissing. Sure.”
    “I know what I saw.”
    “Tucker is not dating Becky. Please . He was her—”
    “Tutor all May,” Ettie interrupts.
    “Yes, but it was purely academic!”
    Now that I think about it . . . Tucker did spend every Saturday morning tutoring Becky at the East Greenwich library.
    There’s no way Tucker is with Becky Winthrop. Becky freakin’ Winthrop is the only sophomore on the varsity cheerleading squad. She broke up with Kyle Lennon, the hottest kid in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. She broke up with him .
    “They were there at, like, seven; they weren’t even having ice cream. I guess he used his fancy biodiesel project to fuel her old junkie car. They had this huge crowd,” Ettie explains. “All the baseball players.”
    “He was showing off with the biodiesel project that we made together for AP Chem?”
    I helped him break down the parts of the car engine. I went to disgusting junkyards for weeks.
    “My biodiesel?” I ask again.
    I’m different, Tucker had said. I just—am. And you haven’t even noticed.
    Ettie is still talking, going on and on with excuses and plans of action.
    Tucker . . . cheated on me?
    I imagine Tucker with Becky, surrounded by all the popular kids at school. They have funny inside jokes, Tucker’s the ringleader with his fancy biodiesel, and I’m at home, working on the comet, waiting for him to come over. I shiver and rid myself of the image. Tucker couldn’t have changed that much, that fast . . .could he? I thought he looked guilty, and I was right.
    You watch the world.
    I’m sloped forward and it takes a lot of effort to sit up straight. Tall and proud isn’t an option right now. I want to crumple in on myself.
    “I’m sorry, Bean,” Ettie says in a tone that gives away she really is. She’s probably sitting on her bed, cello leaning against the wall, with her black hair pinned up above her ears. “They’re losers,” she adds.
    They aren’t the losers.
    I am.
    As I set up my desk, or “comet headquarters,” I can’t stop thinking about Becky Winthrop and Tucker. I see them in my head on a loop, kissing at Hilltop before he even broke up with me. How long was it going on? How long did I ignore the signs?
    I toss the last pen so it rolls off the desk and onto the floor. I don’t even pick it up before heading downstairs.
    “Well, Town and Country wanted to take pictures, again ,” Nancy says from the living room. She’s explaining that her house is still “the talk of the town” because it sits on a peninsula at the very end of Shore Road.
    Apparently this means that everything in Nancy’s house needs to be white. I mean, WHITE. White lighthouses perched on white mantles, ivory-colored couches and off-white wall paint. Interspersed with all the sea-shelled toilet paper holders, napkin