Sprout Read Online Free PDF Page B

although I was pretty sure that wasn’t going to help me).
    I must’ve made some kind of funny expression because Ian’s eyes blinked rapidly, and in a slightly unsteady voice he said, “Um, nice kicks.”
    I looked at my shoes, then back up at Ian. Before I could decide what to say to this true but, let’s face it, pretty unexpected statement, I saw a second figure in the field behind him. Because of the height I thought it was a teacher at first, or maybe one of Ian’s friends come to join in the fun. Then I realized it was the girl who’d sat next to me in first period. She strode rapidly across the dust, as tall and thin as a periscope poking from the waves. She was even more angular standing than sitting, the cardboard flatness of her body heightened by the super-severe eighties wedge that cut across one of her eyes like a slice of pizza taped to her face. This isn’t to say she was awkward or anything. On the contrary. Her body seemed as taut and strong as the wires that hold up a suspension bridge. And her face … man, how do I describe her face? Her face seemed to rise above the usual set of seventh-grade adjectives: PrettyUglyCoolWeirdEtc. Instead you thought of grownup words like “haughty” or “composed” or “striking.” It was a face that seemed to come with its own frame; no matter what angle you looked at it from, it seemed more like a picture than flesh and blood. In tenth grade I saw a painting called Liberty Leading the People and I thought, That’s it, but that day I just thought the girl approaching me looked like a pop star in front of an invisible troupe of backup dancers. You could almost hear the internal soundtrack—my guess, based on the T-shirt, was Hole’s “Rock Star”:
    Well I went to school in Olympia, and everyone’s the same …
    “A hem . I said , ‘Nice kicks ,’ newbie.”
    I looked back at Ian. He had an interesting face too. Well, maybe not interesting as much as handsome—a little bit like Josh Hartnett in The Virgin Suicides (hey, just because I’m a teenager doesn’t mean I can’t like old movies), although he was thicker than JH, more muscly.
    I lifted both feet up (I wasn’t levitating, I was sitting on a stump, remember?) and stared at the graffiti on my shoes. “Fucate,” I said. “Painted, or disguised with paint.”
    “ Hey , Ian.”
    Liberty Leading the People had arrived.
    Ian jumped, turned.
    “Ruth Wilcox,” he said, the way some people say “George Bush” and other people say “Osama bin Laden” and Matt Groening says “Walt Disney.” He pretended to look for something in his pockets. “Too bad I don’t have a letter that needs opening. I could use your nose.”
    I kind of doubt Ian Abernathy had or has any idea what a letter opener is, unless maybe he thinks it’s an email application or something. Ruthie’s nose, however, was most people’s go-to place for an insult. It was just so, well, in your face. Or, in this case, in Ian’s: Ruthie stood so close to him that the tip of her very long, very sharp-looking proboscis practically touched his forehead.
    “Fuchsia,” I said. “A purplish-red color.” Neither of them noticed.
    “Beat it, Abernathy.”
    “You beat it, Wilcox.”
    “Fucoid. A seaweed.”
    I could’ve been talking to the wind for all the attention either of them paid to me. Not that I was surprised. This wasn’t about me. It was a turf war. Crips versus Bloods, schoolyard-style.
    Ruth Wilcox walked around Ian Abernathy like a drill sergeant checking out a sorry-looking recruit.
    “Let’s face it, Ian. We’re not kids anymore. Now that I’ve got these”—she grabbed her chest, which, if anything, was flatter than mine—“it’s no longer okay for you to throw down with me. Which means I can beat the tar out of you, but if you lay a finger on me the whole school will come down on you like a ton of bricks for hitting a girl. So either I kick your butt until you crawl off in shame, or you just crawl off