Playing with Matches Read Online Free PDF

I’d cleaned the old
Mad
magazines off the floor, there’d be room for Amy’s bra? That the only thing keeping the girls’ volleyball team from pouncing on me was my Albert Einstein T-shirt?
    Along with my junk, I’d eradicated a little bit of my personality. What should I replace it with?

5
    NICO-TEEN
    T he next morning I wedged my car into its assigned spot in the student lot. The guy who owned the much nicer Taurus had parked too close to me again, but I made sure I didn’t smack my door into it very hard. I skipped across the parking lot with the joy I usually reserved for the dentist.
    “Hey, you!”
    That voice. That beautiful, husky voice. It could belong to only one person: Amy Green. I turned.
    She was leaning against someone’s battered Saturn. Her arms were crossed, and she had an expression of utter boredom on her perfect face. Not for the first time, I pictured her lying on a couch, being hand-fed grapes by female slaves.
    “Yeah, you,” Amy said when I hesitated. She was addressing me! I came. I heeled. I would have begged or rolled over if she’d asked.
    Amy held out a cigarette. “Got a light?”
    In my entire life, I had never had a more desperate need to produce fire. I would have banged two rocks together if I’d thought it would make a spark. But I didn’t smoke and didn’t carry a lighter. Even the one in my car had long since been tossed so I could hook up a portable CD player.
    Amy, the human goddess, still pointed her cigarette at me. It was my one chance to start a conversation with her, and I was blowing it! Maybe I should offer to run to that convenience store that was only half a mile away.
    “I’m sorry; I don’t—” I froze. We weren’t alone. Parking Lot Pete was wheezing his way toward us. If there was one thing Pete loved, it was catching a student smoking. He was sneaking from behind Amy, so he probably hadn’t seen anything yet, but he suspected.
    I made a frantic gesture with my head, but Amy must have thought I was having a spasm or something. She stepped back a pace. And Pete (his real name was Mr. Jones) was only a few cars away.
    Without thinking, I snatched the butt from her hand. Pete would see if I threw it on the ground, and I wasn’t sure if he had the right to make me turn out my pockets. Desperately, I crammed the cancer stick all the way into my mouth.
    Amy noticed Pete before she had time to comment on my apparent psychotic episode. Pete glared at Amy, then at me, his bald head and white uniform already soaked with sweat. I gave him a toothless smile as the burning nicotine oozed over my tongue.
    “What do you have in your mouth?” asked Pete.
    “Gum.” I gulped and accidentally swallowed some of the dissolving tobacco.
    “Yeah?” He didn’t seem inclined to leave. My eyes were beginning to water as I merrily chewed my nicotine gum.
    “It really is gum, Mr. Jones,” said Amy. “I just gave it to him.”
    Pete stared me down, apparently wondering if maybe he’d made a mistake. But my mouth was producing saliva, and I had to swallow. Mistake. My delicate stomach, which could handle a dozen Twinkies or a six-pack of Dr Pepper, rejected the Camel.
    I managed not to get any vomit on Amy by gallantly catching most of it on my sneakers. The only thing I’d had for breakfast was a Coke, so everything was a lovely brown.
    As I leaned on my knees, retching, I heard Pete snort. “Chewing gum, eh? Come to the office. That’s going to be a week of in-school suspension.”
    Figuring there was no point in trying to impress Amy now, I inhaled deeply and forcibly cleared my nostrils.
    “I wasn’t smoking,” I gasped.
    “What are you talking about? There’s a butt right there.”
    I spit between my feet. “That’s not a butt.”
    “Then what is it, smart guy?”
    Stomach acid was burning my sinuses and I think I had barf on my lips. Still, I managed to straighten up and face Pete.
    “It’s a hunk of food. Feel free to prove me wrong.”
    I