Something Wikkid This Way Comes Read Online Free PDF

about the teachers, about the boys at the boys’ school, about their parents. It seems innocuous initially, but I notice that Jodi increasingly hones in on negative responders. Lara, for example, is goodness personified. She defends her teachers, thinks boys are sweet and chivalrous, and loves her parents. Jodi quickly loses interest in Lara.
    “Starr,” on the other hand, is answering everything negatively. Her parents are assholes who sent her away because they don’t understand her. The boys at the boys’ school are immature assholes who don’t understand her, and she likes “real men,” anyway. The teachers? Guess what—they’re assholes who don’t understand her. Jodi spends a lot of time commiserating with “Starr’s” woes, not recognizing the fiddle is playing the fiddler.
    They talk forever, and it all gets a bit boring, as teenage angst inevitably does, when Jodi says something that makes me perk up.
    “So you’re probably wondering what we’re all doing here,” Jodi says.
    Yes , I think. We are, actually.
    “Well, I met all of you, and I felt really…close to you. Like you’d understand me, and I’d understand you. I know I seem popular at school, but…” Jodi pauses and when she speaks again, her voice is that of a Very Sad Girl. “But the truth is, I’m lonely.”
    “ You’re lonely?” Madison asks sarcastically. Madison’s a hulking, sullen girl whose gum I’m constantly cleaning off the underside of desks.
    “Of course I am. Just because it seems like I have friends doesn’t mean I can’t be lonely.” Jodi’s always-large eyes are big as saucers, and she looks like she might cry. I resist air-playing her a tiny violin, not least because no one can see me anyway.
    “It’s hard,” Shar says, approaching Jodi and putting an arm around her waist. “It’s like we’re expected to always be one thing, and sometimes it’s easier to be that way. But we can still be totally different inside.”
    Shar’s “logic” leaves me baffled, but it seems to work for Jodi.
    “That’s it, totally,” the cheerleader says, beaming at Shar. Shar beams back, pretending they’ve had a Moment.
    “I’m sorry, but you’re, like, the most popular girl in school. And a cheerleader. Why are you even hanging out with us?” Madison still isn’t having any of it.
    Jodi heaves a heartfelt sigh. “That’s just how I am at school,” she says. “I’ve learned it’s better just to get along with everyone. But inside, I’m different. I like people like you guys. People who are different.”
    “You’ve never seemed to like us ‘different people’ before,” Madison points out, pulling her ugly cardigan tighter around her.
    “Yeah, well, there’s someone who has come into my life. Someone who has shown me another way to be. Someone who speaks to the darkness in me.”
    At the word “darkness,” there’s a long silence.
    “I feel like there’s a darkness in me, too,” Shar says nervously, as if she’s admitting a huge secret.
    “Dude, are you part of that cult?” Madison interjects. “Everyone says all those girls have transferred, but we know they’re the ones fucking up the school.” I cheer internally. I’ll happily clean up Madison’s gum if she keeps cutting to the chase like that.
    Jodi laughs. “What cult? We’re just here to get to know each other better. There may be powers in this town, powers that might be interested in us, but that’s not what this is about.”
    Silence falls on the group as they mull over Jodi’s words. She’s done it perfectly—promising nothing while hinting at everything, all the while denying direct involvement with anything untoward.
    “To get to know each other really well, I think we should do a ritual,” she says, her perky cheerleader voice more appropriate for suggesting they bake cookies.
    “A ritual?” I hear Ana ask hesitantly. One of the few Hispanics in our school, Ana’s Catholicism runs deep. Although her answers to