Don't You Wish Read Online Free PDF Page A

top-grade super-leather. The edges are torn, and Dad has covered them with clear tape.
    The carpet, once beige, has a pretty noticeable charcoal-colored path where we all walk in and out of the room. Next to Dad’s chair is an unopened box of lightbulbs (buy three hundred, get one free!) that hasn’t found a home in … four months. Under the coffee table, a set of old silverware Mom wants to throw away but that Dad says he might be able to use for some invention.
    The landfill isn’t just the basement anymore, I think glumly. Pretty soon I won’t be able to bring my friends into the den, either. I head into the kitchen, which feels dingy and cluttered and as cheerless as our torn pleather and worn carpet.
    No wonder Mom cried over Jim Monroe’s palace.
    I turn out the kitchen light and walk to my room, wondering if I can work any magic with the broken laptop. I pass Theo’s room, where he is on his computer—an ancient IBM that has a monitor the size of a small building—with Watson snoring on the bed.
    “Night, Theo.”
    He looks up. “Is Mom sick?” he asks.
    “I don’t think so.”
    He opens his mouth, and I hold out my hand. “For God’s sake, don’t burp.”
    He burps.
    “Real cool and classy, you idiot.”
    “Who wants to be cool and classy?”
    I do!
And pretty and popular, and God, I don’t want to live in this dingy house on Rolling Rock Road with Dad the hoarder and Theo the burper anymore!
    But I just walk away. In my room, I close and lock the door, drawn to the
Architectural Digest
magazine I’ve left on my bed. Once more, I skim through the
Flawless House
, as I now think of it; then, disgusted and envious, I throw the magazine under my bed and turn my attention to the broken laptop on my desk.
    “Better give you last rites, old Averatec.” I set it on my pillow, optimistically plugging it into the wall, and the little green light comes on but the screen is blank. No surprise, because it has no circuitry, thank you very much, Dad.
    On the nightstand next to me, I see Dad’s off-brand smartphone that I brought up from the basement. What if I connect the phone to the laptop with my phone charger cable? Possible to run the old Averatec off the iPhone?
    Only the daughter of a RadioShack salesman could have that idea. The cables fit—also because only a daughter of a RadioShack salesman would have a cast-off universal phone charger that some customer left in a box at the store. I plug it into my computer, hit the On button, and miraculously the screen flashes to life.
    “Oh, my God, it works!”
    I wait for the Averatec logo to pop up, but when itdoesn’t, my heart sinks. This is a fool’s errand. If I want to get on Facebook that bad just to read the nasty post–Shane bus episode comments, I could borrow Theo’s computer. Then he’ll read about it, and—
    My face fills up the screen.
    Whoa. Not my face.
That
face. That face Dad created and saved on the iPhone! I reach to tap the Escape key, but my finger hovers, not quite ready to part with that image.
    Because … what would Shane Matthews say to
that
girl?
    When he asked her to go to homecoming, he’d mean it. And he’d be sweating out a rejection. Man, what would it be like?
    I can’t even imagine. Where would a girl like that live? My mind skitters to the magazine I’ve just thrown under my bed. She’d live in that house, with that billionaire for a dad, and—
    A white flash of lightning blinds me for a second, instantly followed by the loudest smack of thunder I’ve ever heard. All the power goes out.
    Damn. Just when I got the computer to work.
    The only thing still lit is the little flat-screen phone in my hand. I glance at it to see if it has a flashlight app, but freeze at the sight of me on the screen. Again, not the real me. Not plain Annie Nutter with paper-bag-brown hair and braces and zits.
    Everything is pitch-black but that tiny screen and that beautiful, beautiful girl.
    Why can’t I be that girl? Why