Bleeding Violet Read Online Free PDF

with the purple?” Carmin asked, practically into my ear.
    I turned to face him.
    He wore a T-shirt with the words DISCO FEVER stamped across it in silver. A carefully knotted silk tie lay against the shirt, and he played with it as he watched me.
    “What’s with the black?” I said.
    “Ain’t safe to draw attention to yourself. Ain’t safe to stand out.”
    I stared at the other kids in the class, who weren’t even pretending not to listen—they
did
seem to blend into one another.
    “This is the only color available to me at the moment,” I told Carmin. “I’m in mourning.”
    He smirked. “We’re all in mourning.”
    “For who?”
    He reached forward and snapped one of my dress straps. “Stupid transies who never listen.”
    But he was wrong.
    I heard it clearly:
    COMECOMECOMECOMECOMECOMECOME
    I stood before one of the windows on the right side of the classroom, straining forward, my fingertips inches from the rain-streaked glass, but I couldn’t close the distance.
    “Nice save, Carmin,” someone said, setting a fallen chair upright.
    Carmin had the sash of my dress in a death grip as he reeled me in and half carried me back to my seat.
    A path of destruction led from where I’d been sitting to the windows—overturned desks, books and notebooks scattered on the floor along with one or two disgruntled kids, who climbed to their feet and dusted themselves off.
    Had I done all that in my inexplicable dash for the window? I didn’t even remember leaving my desk. I was afraid to meet anyone’s eyes.
    “Hey, Carmin?” a girl whispered, as he dumped me backinto my chair. “The transy looks spooked. Why don’t you give her a little something to calm her down?”
    “Because,” said Carmin behind me, “drug dealing is against the law.”
    For some reason, everyone found this hilarious.
    “Let’s gamble instead.”
    “Yeah,” someone else whispered, “cuz gambling’s totally legal.” More laughter.
    “Seriously,” Carmin continued. “Transies can’t handle weird shit, that’s known. Who wants to bet
this
transy freaks and runs outta here screaming?”
    My classmates cut their eyes at me, waiting for some big meltdown.
    Who the hell did they think I was? My life was a continuum of weird shit. I’d just gone on a rampage, for Christ’s sake—
they
were the ones who should have been freaking out.
    “I say she faints,” said a girl to my left.
    “This ain’t
Gone with the Wind
. Nobody faints anymore.”
    Money exchanged hands in a flurry of fevered whispers and speculations.
    If I had been caught running amok at my old school, I’dhave been sent to the nurse’s office, the nurse would have called Aunt Ulla, and then Aunt Ulla would have called my shrink. Here they just laughed and made bets.
    Rosalee’s words came back to me:
Even if you were Hannibal Lecter himself, around here you’re nothing special
.
    Ms. Harrison appeared beside me and placed a well-worn book on my desk. “Here you go. And here are your earplugs.” She shoved the cold, waxy things into my ears herself, like she didn’t trust me. Not that I could blame her after my rampage.
    “Okay, class,” she said. “Turn to page thirty-two.”
    That’s when I noticed that the book Ms. Harrison had given me wasn’t a geometry book. On the cover, a young girl smiled benignly beneath the title,
A Teen’s Guide to Living with Bipolar Disorder
.
    I opened the book to page thirty-two and squinted at the multiple-choice questions.
    12. All work and no play makes Hanna ______.
    a. eat Cheerios         c. go crazy
    b. limp awkwardly   d. very sad
    I circled
d
and closed the book just in time to see the cover girl clap her hands over her ears, a pained expression on her face. I bent close to the book, close enough to envy the sparkly red lip gloss coloring the cover girl’s mouth.
    “What’s wrong?” I whispered.
    “Can’t you
hear
that?” the cover girl asked. Her voice was flylike, wee and buzzy.
    “Hear