Pass It On Read Online Free PDF Page A

Jonathan?”
    â€œUm, yeah. She’s marrying my dad, but I guess you knew that?”
    â€œOh, it’s hard to keep track of Penelope. But your father is a lucky man, Jonathan. Penelope makes the rest of us look like paupers.” She saidthis while motioning around at their house, which was as big as a mansion in the suburbs and probably worth ten times as much.
    â€œMy dad invited me to go on their honeymoon with them through the Caribbean on her two-hundred-fifty-foot sailboat.” I looked at Arno and tried to think how I could possibly segue this conversation into
by the way, my dad stole a bunch of money from your family.
And then, maybe because I felt so guilty, I said, “Maybe you can come, too. I think I can bring one friend.”
    â€œAbso-fucking-lutely.” Arno smiled his big handsome smile and I knew I’d just done something really stupid. What about my other guys?
    â€œLanguage, Arno,” said Allie, but she was already on her way back to her room, so he hardly looked up.
    I paused for a second, since I could feel already that these secrets were starting to snowball. I had to tell him.
    â€œArno, I’ve got to tell you some—” but instead of going on, I stopped. I couldn’t do it. I mean, what if he never had to know? If Penelope was so rich, then maybe this really would just all go away, and I could go on this trip with my dad, and he’d quietly give the money back, and I’d pretendI never knew about all this awful stuff …
    â€œIf you were going to tell me I should go to a party Liesel’s hosting uptown tomorrow night even though she makes me crazy, then I should tell you that you’re right, because that’s what’s happening.”
    â€œI wasn’t—”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWasn’t I—nothing,” I said.
    â€œApparently her friends think Monday night is party night.”
    â€œWell, so do we.”

david’s sweet and somewhat-too-serious love affair
    â€œI just hope we’re enough for each other,” Amanda Harrison Deutschmann said.
    â€œWe totally are,” David said. “We’ve been over this. You did something wrong with Arno and I did some bad stuff too, but all that’s over.”
    â€œI just wish I felt more sure about that,” she said and pressed her forehead against her windowpane.
    They were in her big room in her family’s Tribeca loft, decorated in a mix of what Amanda thought was cool now, which was beige late-sixties furniture, and what she’d thought was cool when she was ten, which was white wood and wicker. There were photos on the walls of Amanda with her friends, and a framed picture of John F. Kennedy Jr. surrounded by clouds.
    Amanda had been trying on clothes for the party Liesel Reid was having the next night. The girls knew each other from Nightingale.
    â€œYou never used to be so … so confident-sounding.”Amanda stood in front of him in a purple and pink flowered bra and panties from La Petite Coquette. Her parents were out at dinner and she had no brothers or sisters. This was one of the few things that she and David had in common.
    David stared at her. She was really short and very pretty. “Come here.” He held his arms out and she came and sat in his lap. He put his big arms around her and she played with his big hands, covering her little ones with them.
    â€œMaybe there’s some way to make us a stronger couple.” Amanda put her cheek next to David’s. She smelled of a perfume that David couldn’t name, something with jasmine. He breathed it in. He looked at his hairy wrist against her ribs.
    â€œI don’t know—don’t you think we’re already pretty strong?” David sighed.
    â€œWe could be stronger, like if we swore undying love to each other.”
    â€œWe’ve already done that. Look, you’re making me feel all unbalanced and uneven, like I did during the one