Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here Read Online Free PDF Page B

my head, though, I’m thinking,
Nobody who has plenty of friends would say “plenty o’ friends.”
    Just when I’m about to speed-walk around the corner, I glance back at Gideon, and with my head turned, I smack directly into Ashley.
    “Oh, sorry,” I mumble.
    “No, I am soooo sorry,” she says, knitting her on-trend thickeyebrows with overwrought concern, and continues down the hall. She has less of a walk than an easily imitable busty glide, leading with the kind of boobs that prompt dim boys like Mike Neckekis to deem her “really smart” or “really funny.”
    And then she takes a running leap into Gideon’s arms.



Chapter 5
    RUTH IS DYING LAUGHING, WHICH IS EVEN MAKING AVERY crack up a little, and I don’t appreciate it.
    “It’s not funny.” I shove the bulb into the crude trowel hole I made a few moments ago. “First the show, now this. All of a sudden my whole life is just a shit salad.”
    “Pointed side
up
, milady!” Ruth shouts from her end of the garden, wiping sweat off her brow and accidentally replacing it with dirt. She grabs her lighter—a gold one, with an engraving I’ve never dared get close enough to read—and sparks up a J.
    Ruth is seventy-three. Did I mention that?
    I roll my eyes and turn the bulb right-side up. Avery’s curled up in the hanging chair on the porch with a calculus workbook, having put in her thirteen minutes of gardening before an “asthma attack” struck. (Ave actually does get asthma attacks, but whenasked to participate in light-to-medium physical activity, she has “asthma attacks.”)
    “You do share DNA with her, so I’m sure you have some insight on this,” I say, wheeling toward Avery. “Out of all the boys in school, even Mike Tossier, who looks like Ryan Gosling when you squint from a few paces away, why
Gideon
?”
    I keep replaying it in my head—Gideon’s arms around Ashley as he stared at her, charmed by her fake awkwardness as she laughed at his jokes, twirled her hair, sprayed her pheremonal glands or whatever—and berating myself with arrows and circles, like I’m examining a bad Super Bowl play.
    “Is this what PTSD is like?” I whine.
    In the middle of lighting the joint, Ruth gives me her patented
Shut up, you millennial twit
glare. I give her a hopeful
Pass that weed, brah!
smile. She firmly shakes her head, and I am secretly relieved. This is our usual dance.
    “I just messed it all up,” I mumble, turning back to the remaining bulbs.
    “Oh, right, because before this, it absolutely looked like you guys were heading for homecoming court,” deadpans Avery without looking up from her calc book.
    “Shut your face, Wheezy.”
    Ruth clears her throat. “Well,
I
think”—she waits for both of us to give her due attention and respect—“
I
think it went better than you could’ve possibly imagined.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “Would you say it was ‘unforgettable’?”
    “No, because I’d like to forget it as quickly as possible.”
    “That wasn’t my question.”
    “Actually, it was. You just have Alzheimer’s.”
    Ruth doubles over and laughs so hard that the joint almost falls out of her mouth. She holds up her hand, signaling for us to give her a second to catch her breath. Sometimes I forget how old she is—I don’t like to think about it. To be honest, these “being adjacent to mortality” moments are a bummer. I know it’s strange to be friends with a seventy-three-year-old, but like most unlikely friendships, ours has kind of an origin story.

    Back in freshman year social studies, I had to interview a senior citizen. All my grandparents had already shuffled off this mortal coil, and I didn’t want to hit up the Melville Retirement Community because nursing homes creep me out. They’re like drive-throughs for death.
    The old lady across the highway, in the dilapidated house with the beautiful garden, seemed like the most convenient option. I didn’t know her at all, but Dawn and everyone else on