Reject High (Reject High: A Young Adult Science Fiction Series Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

another reason, she certainly wasn’t going to let on either way.  
    “TTYL,” she said.
     

     
    “TTYL” was the last I’d heard from her until Monday morning, when she boarded my bus. She might have gotten in trouble or gotten tired of talking. We must not live too far apart after all, since I just got on a stop ago. Since nobody sits with freshmen but freshmen, I moved my bag and she joined me in my seat. We got moving again down the residential road.  
    “Morning, Cap.” With her head bowed, she removed the electric blue headphones clipped to her ears and turned off her MP4 player. 
    “What’s up with you?” Did I hurt her feelings or something?
    “When I got home, Máma was waiting for me.”
    I’d never heard her say anything remotely Spanish before. “Gotcha. Everything okay with your dad?”
    Her lifeless eyes said it all, though she denied it in a whisper. “Fine.”
    How could I reassure her? I touched her knuckles with my fingers, and rather than pull back, she slumped against the bus seat. I could tell she needed to say something, anything to somebody.
    “So, I get home, and Máma tells me ‘get in, we’re going to the hospital to see Pápa’,” she said, confirming my suspicions. “I go inside and get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Then she calls me fat.”
    Rhapsody wasn’t a big girl. “Okay.”
    “Martinez women are pears, and Lowe’s are sticks with boobs. Guess which side I take after?”
    One useful thing Ray taught me before he ditched us was to never answer a question like that.
    “I got in, and it’s the first thing she says. ‘You ate lunch, right’?” She jabbed her right index finger in the air. “‘Take it easy. You don’t exercise or anything’.” She let off a string of Spanish cuss words.
    Maybe Rhapsody ate more when she got upset. Debra usually buys a pint of Chunky Monkey ice cream and watches reruns of crime shows. If I even looked at her eating, she’d growl, like a mother bear protecting her cub.
    “Okay. . .”
    “I’m muchacha bonita , like ‘pretty for a thick, Panamanian girl’. It was just a sandwich.”
    Rhapsody got teary-eyed, but I didn’t want to stop her. She needed this.
    “So she says, ‘You haven’t gone yet, have you?’ No way I’m spilling my guts to a stranger.” I think the irony of her statement hit her right then. “You know, no priests, counselors, psychologists. Nada.”
    The bus stopped outside of Reject High. Though I wanted to hear the rest of her story, it did not stop me from watching for Selby. I hated looking over my shoulder. He didn’t scare me, but Debra made me promise in church yesterday not to use my fists for fighting anymore. Breaking promises isn’t a big deal to me, except for when God’s involved.
    In typical Rhapsody fashion, she closed up again. We parted ways before first period, I headed to class, and she to wherever. She could’ve gone to class, but I doubted it. Blowing them off here was too easy. As appealing as it was to hang out in a girls’ bathroom for three hours, I passed today.
    What a mistake.
    First period Freshman Language Arts might as well have been Drill a Hole through My Skull class. For forty-five minutes, while the teacher rambled on and on about poetry, I daydreamed about how much fun I could have had listening to the album I downloaded last week while hanging out with Rhapsody in the South Hall bathroom.
    Next, I suffered through math and U.S. History. Last before lunch was art – the only thing that somewhat didn’t bore me. Our instructor played R&B music while we painted and drew. Some of the girls sang along to the tunes, which was annoying, since they made up words for lyrics they didn’t know. I glanced around the room to check out everyone else’s work before starting mine. 
    Then, I saw her.
    A girl too perfectly gorgeous to be human – she had long, curly brown hair, smooth brown skin, and pink lips. I stared at her body, too, more than once. When