Rainey Royal Read Online Free PDF

daughter. “Can’t you fucking
tell
?” says Rainey loudly, causing a guard to take several decisive steps toward her. “She’s like totally transported. Jesus Christ.”

    T UESDAY, FROM THE FIFTH row, Rainey stares at Miss Brennan as if tenth-grade chemistry might save her life. Her gaze savors the heart-shaped face and locks onto the electric-blue irises. Obviously she’s listening, right?
    Meanwhile, she inches her arm over to the wall where the Erlenmeyer flasks are lined up. Then she closes her hand around one.
    She feels Tina encouraging her, without eye contact, from the front of the room. Miss Brennan separates them. A bunch of teachers separate them, especially in gym. They don’t know it strengthens Rainey to feed on Tina’s energy from a distance, to know what Tina is thinking without meeting her eyes. Like right now, Tina is thinking,
I dare you to eat the egg afterward. Real slow
.
    Rainey pretends she doesn’t even know what her hand is doing with the flask because she is so riveted by Miss Brennan’s every word. Miss Brennan is gorgeous, even if she is like thirty. She looks like Wonder Woman. So here is what Rainey and Tina want to know: If a woman becomes a chemistry teacher
by choice
, does that mean she is a lesbo or hates sex? And are those two things the same?
    Rainey has some unanswered questions in this department, but one thing she knows for sure is how to coax the fat glimmering hard-boiled egg in her lunch bag down the skinny neck of the Erlenmeyer flask.
    When she has slid the flask right in front of her, she dips her hand into her pack, finds her lunch, and slips the peeledhard-boiled egg out of its Baggie, never taking her gaze off Honor Brennan.
    She balances the egg on the lip of the flask, where it nests, ovoid and shiny, stuck on the neck of the bottle like a fat stopper.
    Miss Brennan radars onto her. “Absolutely not,” she says. “What lab are
you
doing?” In that moment—Rainey can feel it—Miss Brennan loses Andy Sakellarios, who looks at the egg and laughs hoarsely. She loses Tina, separated by four lab tables but communicating mischief telepathically. She loses Mary Gage, who peers over the collar of her rabbit-fur jacket with wide eyes.
    “Egg,” says Miss Brennan, pointing at it. “Trash,” pointing near her desk. “Immediately.” She loses Leah Levinson, who glances only at the base of the flask, and Rainey knows why: she’s afraid to look Rainey in the eye.
    Hard to handle, Rainey thinks. That’s what they say when they talk about me.
    She flips her hair over her shoulder, a long, sensuous gesture involving a dramatic arm flourish, because her hair comes down past her waist.
    “Miss Brennan?” she says sweetly. “I really, really want to make this egg go down this hole. It’ll just take a minute. Please? It’s science.”
    Rainey keeps her voice low and says
hole
as if she were blowing a smoke ring, or a kiss, which makes the boys grin.
    “It’s third-grade science,” says Miss Brennan, “and thereis no food in my class. Throw it out, now, Rainey, I’m not kidding.”
    Rainey is busy. It’s this thing she does with her hair, combing it with her fingers, looking around, catching her friends’ eyes and laughing—she has it down. “But I
like
third-grade science,” she says in a little-girl voice. She thrusts her shoulders back. If Miss Brennan is having sex with a male teacher, she wants her to think about that teacher trying not to look at Rainey’s bust in class. Miss B doesn’t have that kind of bust, the kind her own father has special words for. “I have a lighter,” Rainey entreats—her way of announcing that she smokes, in case there is still someone who doesn’t know—and she tears a thin strip of paper out of her notebook. “Please? Can I? It’ll take ten seconds.”
    She flicks the lighter and waits. The flame wavers near her thumb. The class is mesmerized.
    “You are this close to detention. But ten seconds, yes,” says Miss