Connect the Stars Read Online Free PDF Page A

before, not because I was in trouble—because I never was—but because Dean Amory liked to keep an eye on the emotional and social well-being of her students, and she worried about me. She worried about my thin skin, my low tolerance for lying and deceit, my ever-shorteningfriend list, my increasing withdrawal from the Harriet Tubman social scene. I knew that she liked me, but still, most of our conversations in her office began with her sighing like a deflating balloon, and this conversation was no different.
    â€œI didn’t do it,” I told her. “I have no criminal record. I’ve never even gotten detention. I shouldn’t have to defend myself against this spurious accusation, but I will go on record as saying that I did not do it.”
    â€œShe uninvited you to her party,” said Dean Amory. “That must have hurt.”
    â€œHow did you know that?” But I wasn’t really surprised. Dean Amory knew everything that happened at our school. This was such an accepted fact that she didn’t even bother to answer my question.
    â€œShe told you it was canceled when it wasn’t,” she said.
    â€œWell, I was never going to go anyway.”
    Dean Amory frowned her concerned frown, an expression I’d seen many times before. “Why not, Audrey? Social experiences are so important. And parties are fun!”
    â€œHold on,” I said, leaning against the back of my chair and eyeing her. “Do you think I stole Lyza’s bracelet because she lied to me about her party?”
    Dean Amory sighed again, her shoulders rising up andup and then suddenly falling like someone had dropped something heavy on them, which, if I’d been in a better mood, might have struck me as sort of funny because her standard line to me was: “Don’t carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, Audrey. It’s not your job.”
    â€œI don’t think you stole her bracelet,” said Dean Amory evenly, “and I don’t not think you stole her bracelet. I’m more interested in why she would accuse you, in what passed between you regarding the party that would make her think you took it. How did you get here, Audrey? Can you tell me?”
    â€œYou don’t not think I stole it?”
    â€œLook,” said Dean Amory, opening her hands toward me. “I’m sure that if you did take it, it wasn’t because you wanted it. And I’m also sure that if you took it, you will eventually give it back. Sometimes people do wrong things not because they’re bad people, but because they feel helpless or lost. I certainly don’t believe for a second that you’re a common thief.”
    To my supreme irritation, tears stung my eyes. I stood up.
    â€œI’m not an uncommon thief, either,” I said. “I didn’t steal it. Not for any reason. I am not a dishonest person.”
    â€œOh, Audrey, we’re all dishonest sometimes.”
    â€œI didn’t steal it.”
    â€œOkay. Fine. But let’s talk about the deeper issues at play here.”
    â€œAre you going to call the police? Suspend me? Throw me out of school?”
    My voice trembled when I asked this, because even though I would have dearly loved to walk out of that place and never come back to it in my lifetime, I did not want to be thrown out.
    Dean Amory gave me a long, drawn-out, searching look before she shook her head. “No.”
    â€œThen can I go?”
    Wearily, she nodded. When my back was to her, before I could open her door, she said, “It gets better, you know.”
    Slowly I turned back around. “Are you sure? Because it seems like everything’s gotten so much harder this past couple of years.”
    â€œFor everyone, honey. Self-consciousness is a necessary step in growing up, but it can also be a little painful. Remember when you laughed at whatever you thought was funny without worrying about whether other people thought it