Bounce Read Online Free PDF Page A

scrambled eggs on the table and told me, “You’re going to love the March School.” Then, “That kilt looks darling on you.”
    Darling.
    She had our lunches lined up in a row on the counter: seven brown bags with our names on them, folded down at the top.
    After breakfast, I got Birdie alone. “This is not good,” I told him. “Not good at all.”
    Birdie just hugged me and said the important thing was not the uniform but the quality of my education.
    â€œIt’s not just the uniform,” I told him. “It’s everything.”
    â€œThe March School is very reputable,” he said. “Eleni tells me it was ranked third in the city for—”
    I interrupted him. “I think I’m going to puke.”
    Birdie hugged me again, scruffing his chin along my scalp. “Be sure you brush your teeth afterward,” he said. “Stomach acid dissolves tooth enamel.”
    I don’t know if he was kidding or serious, but right now I really am nauseous. Every time the bus goes over a bump I can feel eggs rising in my throat.
    I am the only person sitting alone. It’s killing me, but I’m not about to ask Phoebe and her little friend Hannah if I can triple with them.
    I wish Jules was here. Or even my brother, who at this moment is riding in a car with Thalia and the sweater twins, on his way to the public high school. When I said good-bye this morning, he was pale with red eyes.
    â€œAre you okay?” I asked.
    And he said, “Ungh.”
    It’s Mackey’s first day of school, too, and I keep forgetting how bad it is for him, being zitty and geek-smart and not remotely cool. He will probably walk into the cafeteria later and not know where to go. Because no one will wave him over.
    Whereas I’m sure that at some point today, at least one person will come up to me and say, “Hey, are you the new girl?”
    She may not be Miss Popular, but that’s okay. In my old school, I was somewhere in the middle. Maybe she’ll have braces, like Jules, or a funny accent, like my friend Raquel, or her nose will be a little squooshed, like Ann’s. But she will be nice, holding out her hand and saying, “I’m So-and-so. Who are you?”
    And I will tell her, and then she will ask me to sit with her at lunch.
    That’s one thing I can be glad of right now. At least I am not my brother.
    When the bus stops and everyone gets up, I realize I’m dressed wrong. For one thing, I don’t have long hair. I don’t have long hair smoothed back in a velvet headband or pulledup in a high, shiny ponytail. Also, I’m not wearing knee socks, folded over just so. Or big black shoes with chunky heels. I have on plain white sneakers and Ped socks—the kind with the pom-pom at the ankle.
    Right this second, Jules, Raquel, and Ann have on plain white sneakers and Peds with pom-poms, as they walk into my old school together, without me.
    Now the bus driver is staring at me in the giant rearview mirror. “Sometime this month?”
    I stand up and take off my Peds and stuff them into my backpack. Like this will be enough.
    In homeroom, I’m seated between two girls who are wearing the correct hair-and-sock combo. They lean over and talk to each other like I’m not here.
    â€œDid you watch The E.B. last night?” the one with the ponytail asks.
    And the one with the headband says, “Natch.”
    I know what they’re talking about, this TV show Jules and I used to rag on—where the kids act like adults and the adults act like kids, and everyone is tan, even in winter.
    â€œIsn’t Wyatt James sooooo petute?”
    â€œSooooo petute.”
    â€œI can’t believe Brandi dumped him for Vincent.”
    â€œI know!”
    â€œBrandi is a pita, anyway,” Ponytail says.
    â€œA total pita,” says Headband. And they both laugh.
    I sit absolutely still. I think about the only pita I know