Frost Read Online Free PDF Page B

you. She said . . . What was it?” He thought for a minute and then smiled. “Oh, yeah. You remind her of an angel.”
    “An angel?” I said. “Hardly.”
    His gaze traced a path from my chin to my hair. “Maybe she meant you look like one.”
    My hand flew to the top of my head. “Frizz. Not a halo,” I said, hoping my suddenly hot cheeks hadn’t pinked. “And if you knew she liked me, why did you have to talk to Jessica Liu?”
    “Jess—? Oh. Right.” He sounded a bit sheepish. “It’s just, Celeste doesn’t always have the best judgment about people and . . . I tend to be pretty protective of her.”
    We held eyes for a minute. Something had shifted; the connection between us had changed. We’d stripped some things away, like when you strip away layers of lumpy paint and get down to the smooth, original wood.
    I gestured in the direction of Frost House. “I have to go prepare my presentation.”
    David nodded and swung a leg over the frame. “Guess I’ll see you there, if not before.”
    I’d turned the corner toward home when I heard, “Leena?” He biked toward me. “One other thing.”
    “What?” I said.
    “Spoons.”
    “What?”
    He rode around me in a circle. “Abby wanted to know what I do. That’s it.”
    “Spoons? ” I said, turning to follow his path.
    He smiled, wide, with full-on dimples. In this light, the blue of his eyes reminded me of raspberry slushies. “See you, Leena,” he said. And rode away.
    I decided to finish unpacking and arranging my room before working on my presentation, and as I filled drawers and shifted furniture and hung pictures, I kept wondering what David had meant. People played spoons as instruments, but he’d said he wasn’t a musician. There was a card game called Spoons; I found that hard to imagine. So, what . . . ?
    I hadn’t come up with any feasible possibilities when I joined Viv and Abby upstairs. I didn’t ask for their input, though. Not that I thought it was a big secret. Just that something about the way he hadn’t said anything at dinner made me keep it to myself.
    I did want to talk about something else.
    “You guys?” I said after they’d declared my speech ready for the tender ears of the newbies. “I know that having Celeste here wasn’t the plan, but I think we should make an effort to be welcoming. Not fakey-fake nicey-nice. Friendly.”
    “Seriously?” Abby had been sprawled on Viv’s shaggy white rug, eating a brownie. Now she sat up. “You realize you’re asking me to go against my true nature? Like asking a vampire to be a phlebotomist and not drink from the vials.”
    “I know,” I said, placing my hand on hers in faux sympathy. “You’re truly a mean, mean person. But this won’t change who you are. No one outside of the dorm has to know.”
    She sighed. “In that case, I suppose I can do it.”
    “Viv?” I said.
    “I’m always nice,” she answered from her cross-legged position on the cushioned window seat. “And I don’t even care she’s living with us. I love it here already. This room is so damn cozy. Orin must’ve read it wrong.” Rain tapped the glass behind her. Another storm had started.
    “What does Orin have to do with anything?” I asked.
    Viv paused, a mug of tea halfway to her mouth. Her eyes darted to Abby, who shrugged, and then back to me. “Oh, nothing.”
    “You obviously told Abby,” I said. “Come on, you know I won’t take it seriously.”
    “We decided not to tell you because you’re the one who picked Frost House,” Viv said, resting her mug next to her knee. “I guess, though, if you won’t believe it anyway . . . He didn’t want me to live here. There’s some sort of . . . darkness connected to it.”
    Heat spread up the back of my neck. “You’re right. That’s stupid.”
    “Then again . . .” Abby waved her brownie. “He could be talking about Green Beret.”
    I loved Abby, but that was the last straw. “That’s it,” I announced,