Breakfast with Neruda Read Online Free PDF Page A

my mouth as I drive. “It helps keep me skinny, though.”
    “I wouldn't call you skinny,” I say. “Thin, but you’ve got curves where a girl needs them.”
    She looks down at herself. “Yeah, I am smokin’ hot.”
    I laugh. “Okay,” I say. “I get the smoking thing, but there’s part of the story you’re not telling me.”
    “Yeah, but you’re not telling me everything either,” she says. “So we’re kind of even, aren’t we?”
    I park the car under some partial shade in the front lot at school. “If a time comes when I trust you,” she says, “I’ll fill in the details of my debacle, and you’ll tell me the real reason you live in your car.”
    “Agreed.” I nod, and open my car door. We start to walk into the building together. “So how do you know my brother?”
    “We were lab partners in biology last year,” she says.
    “He’s good people,” I say.
    The building is clammy and dark when we get inside. “The generator’s not working right,” Earl says, “so it’s going to be a hot one.”
    “Where’s Hess?” Shelly asks.
    “He’s gonna be late. He’s got trees blocking his driveway.”
    “Our electricity is out as well,” Shelly says. “And Michael . . . he doesn’t have any power, either.” She winks at me.
    Earl tells us it’s too damn hot to clean upstairs, so he has us wiping counters in first-floor rooms. By lunchtime it’s possibly hotter inside than out. Earl sweats so much his shirt is soaked.
    “Maybe we ought to call it a day,” Earl says. “We have all summer.” He smiles, and says, “And this time I have two full-time slaves.”
    Shelly and I walk outside together. She is texting. I notice my car and Earl’s pickup are the only ones left in the lot. The school administrators only work in the mornings during summer, and none of them bothered to come in today. “Don’t you drive?” I ask.
    “Used to.”
    “How’d you get here?”
    “My dad drops me off every day. My mom picks me up.” Her phone emits a bloodcurdling scream.
    “Nice ringtone,” I say.
    “It’s my mom’s.” She glances at her text. “Shit. My mom is just starting her Pilates class. I have to wait here for another hour and a half.”
    “I can take you home,” I say.
    “Okay. Thanks.” She texts her mom, and stashes the phone in her bag.
    In the car she says, “I’m in no hurry to get home. Wanna just drive around? Look at storm damage?”
    I check my gas gauge. “This thing only gets about eight miles to a gallon,” I say. “And I’ve got just enough gas to last me ’til next payday.”
    “I’m not allowed to drive, but you are,” she says. “We can take one of my parents’ cars.”
    There are neighborhoods in Rooster where average families live, and then there are trailer parks, apartments, and townhouses, like where my mom and sister live. A select group in this town lives in houses like Shelly’s: a three-story brick mansion with a three-car garage. I park my ride on the street. “You can pull it into the driveway,” she says.
    “No way. This thing leaks fluids.”
    We get out and walk up the long driveway to her front door. “I’m going to stay outside,” I say. “I smell like a cat box.”
    “Don’t be stupid. Nobody else is home.”
    I look down at my wrinkled, sweaty self. I have never felt more like white trash than I do now.
    “Besides, we won’t actually be going in the house,” she says. “We’ll go through the kitchen.” She grabs my shirtsleeve and tugs me inside with her. Her house is also without power, but I can hear a generator running in the backyard. The ceiling fans run slowly, just enough to make the inside slightly less hot than the outside. The kitchen is all white and stainless steel, like something out of a magazine.
    “So are you guys rich or something?” I ask.
    She shrugs. “My dad’s a lawyer. I guess he does okay.”
    “What does your mom do?”
    “Teaches yoga and Pilates.”
    “I thought you said . . .” I