So Much to Learn Read Online Free PDF Page A

much?
    "Dude, chew
first, then swallow," my brother advised, fairly hypocritically
considering the way he was shovelling his food into his own mouth.
He turned back to me and said, fulfilling his brotherly quotient of
the day, "but you're alright now, yeah?"
    I took a seat
opposite Jack and smiled broadly. "I'm fine. Jack’s going to help
me with an assignment so I'm feeling pretty confident about
things."
    Jack glanced at
me with eyes watery from the force of his choking. His expression
clearly read, 'don't push it.'
    "Cool." Matt
finished his cereal and dumped his empty bowl into the sink.
"Right, I'm off then. I should be back around five or so, oh, and
the guys are going to crash here tonight, alright?"
    I sighed
heavily. The 'guys'. Otherwise known as Tommo, Micky, and Samsa.
How terrible it must have been for their mothers who had given them
the quite nice, ordinary names of Tom, Michael and Sam and had to
watch as they were transformed into names that their friends could
more easily grunt. Matt and Jack were known as, and it pains me to
admit it, Matt-Man and Jack-Hammer or Hammer for short.
    The realms of
masculine stupidity really do know no bounds.
    "As long as
they don't prance around in my underwear again," I muttered
remembering the last time they all came over en masse. I have to
keep my clothes in a big chest of drawers and cupboard out in the
lounge room because there is no space for it in my little room.
Rifling through its contents while drunk one night the boys had
found my bras. Some of my lingerie was stretched beyond recognition
once I'd finally rescued it. Enough said.
    Matt snorted
with laughter as he grabbed his backpack and shook his head. "Nah,
no worries," he said easily. "They learnt their lesson with the
lecture you gave them the next morning, although I think that
probably had more to do with their hangovers than your teacher
voice. See you later." And he walked out of the flat, still
chuckling.
    Jack and I kept
our eyes averted and stayed silent as we listened to Matt thunder
down the stairs and then the unmistakable sound of his wreck of a
car roaring into life in the car park. It was only when the screech
of tyres alerted us that he'd pulled out into the street and
properly gone that we looked at each other.
    "So, how're you
feeling…I mean really?" Jack asked, leaning forward over the table
and looking at me seriously.
    I twisted a
piece of hair around my fingers self-consciously and gave him an
uncertain look. "Not sure," I confessed. "A bit pissed off, a bit
humiliated, but quite a bit hopeful." I checked to make sure he
knew what I was hopeful about and, as I saw him awkwardly lean back
in his chair, I knew he'd got my point.
    "So you're still keen on… that then," he faltered crossing his arms
defensively.
    I nodded. "It wasn't just the ramblings of the broken-hearted,
I honestly and truly want to learn about… that . And I'm not doing it simply to
get back at Brad, I promise."
    "It wasn't so much the getting back at Brad that I was worried about, but
the getting back with Brad." He frowned. "If we do this, and I'm only saying if ," he added as he saw
my face light up, "you're not going to go running straight back to
that prick are you?"
    "Yes, Jack," I said sarcastically. "Because I'm sure there's
some part of my self-respect that he hasn't had a chance to carve
up with a chainsaw, and it would be a shame to walk away from this
with any sense of dignity left at all." I shook my head. "This is
for me , get it?
I'm sick of having to constantly watch myself around guys in case I
give some sign that it would be alright for them to go for it and
then having to run a mile to get away from them."
    "In that case
it's not yourself that you have to watch, it's them," Jack
countered. "And it's a bloody good thing that you do run a mile
from most of them."
    I stood up and almost threw my bowl on top of Matt's in the
sink before whirling to face Jack again. "Look," I bit out, "as
sweet as the