Possessions Read Online Free PDF

idea who any of the people in the room were. I held up a finger. Kiyoko’s wandering stare landed on me and she nodded once, then returned her attention to Mr. Bhutto.
    “Please join your partners,” Mr. Bhutto said.
    Kiyoko glanced at me, obviously expecting me to move. I had a rebellious moment where I thought about digging in and making her come to me. Come to me, come to me . . . I felt a chill just remembering Mandy’s chant earlier that morning. But curiosity overcame me and I went to her.
    “Hey,” Kiyoko said as I sat down in Shayna’s vacated chair. I felt a little awkward—after all, I had spied on her just a couple hours ago—but I managed a half-smile, half-nod in return. Her notebook was open; she’d taken extensive notes, and her handwriting was amazing. She had a French manicure. My nails were jagged, my cuticles even worse.
    “I’m Kiyoko,” she said, shaking her silky black hair off of her shoulders.
    “Lindsay.” But of course she knew that.
    “So we need to pick a story for the project,” she said, moving on from the pleasantries. “What about this one?” She flipped the pages. She had the most delicate fingers I’d ever seen, like a pianist’s. “‘Young Goodman Brown.’ What do you think? It’s about a Puritan man who meets Devil worshippers in the woods.”
    Before I could reply, she went on. “We’re supposed to use the story as a springboard for a project with more scope, right? So I was thinking we could do a report on the history of satanic rituals in America. Or is that too weird?” Her dark eyes widened.
    I was amazed. She was like a machine; I had never met anyone who was so . . . linear.
    A little shadow passed across her angular face, but just as quickly, she was smiling again. “Hey, we can watch The Crucible with Daniel Day Lewis together.”
    We can? I was caught off guard. I’d expected her to be cruel, like Mandy. Guilt by association—I’d been nice, too, before I started hanging out with Jane.
    “We can probably download it. How about tonight after dinner?”
    “I guess,” I finally said. This was all happening very fast. Then I realized how lucky I was to be her partner. There was no way she was going to allow us to get a bad grade.
    She was quiet for a moment. Then she touched her finger to the corner of her mouth, and looked at it, as if she were checking her lipstick. She dropped her hand to her lap and turned, facing me squarely.
    “Listen,” she said. “I . . . I think someone should, you know, help you out .” She looked at my hair, then at my clothes. “This is a very good place to be, Lindsay.” She flushed and reached down to a beautifully tooled shoulder bag. She pulled out a tissue and tapped her finger against it.
    “Our parents, and the people they know . . . you can make connections that will get you anything you want.”
    She searched my face. “I don’t know why you showed up so late. How you got in, no offense. Maybe somebody dropped. Someone I don’t know.”
    Someone unimportant . Someone beneath your radar , I filled in, but I was listening.
    “So . . . you need to make an effort.” She took a breath. “And here’s the dealio, Lindsay. I’m good to know, but Mandy Winters is even better.”
    Whoa . I had not expected that.
    “It’s incredible that Mandy Winters is here.” She searched my face. “Her parents know presidents and kings. And rock stars. Mandy had lunch at the White House two days before she showed up here.”
    “Wow,” I said. Julie was right: the stratosphere of rich.
    Sensing that she had my attention, Kiyoko leaned toward me. “She has a driver. She can ask her father for the jet . Her mother got her old boyfriend into Harvard on a phone call.”
    “Yeah, and got him booted when they broke up,” Shayna declared, swinging her head around from a chair nearby.
    “She did not,” Kiyoko said, but her voice was less firm.
    “Whatever. She’s another rich you-know-what, but I can’t say it because