The Difference Between You and Me Read Online Free PDF

they call them boot cut!”
    “I just wish you could spend your unique, brilliant energy in a more productive way,” Wyatt continues now. “There are a few very extraordinary people in the world—of whom you and I are, of course, two—who strive for greatness in all things, and the way we do this is not by telling other people what to do, it’s by setting an exceptional example and living brilliantly and getting everything we can get and ignoring everybody else. Anyway, that’s what
I’m
going to do.”
    “Yes, I know you are.”
    “I’m going to get my GED by the end of this year and go to MIT and graduate a year early and start my own nanotech company and make microscopic cell phones that you implant in people’s brain stems and be the youngest person ever to make the Forbes top ten wealthiest Americans list.”
    “Yes, I know.”
    “When I’m married to my gorgeous, brain-surgeon husband who loves to cook, you can come stay with us and our two chocolate labs at our beachfront house in Malibu.”
    “Thanks.”
    “And I was thinking,” Wyatt continues, serious now, as if he’s given what he’s about to say a great deal of thought, “there should be one room in our guesthouse that’s specifically designed for you, and no one but you can stay there.And we’ll have, like, copies of all your favorite books on the shelves and a mini-fridge with all your favorite snacks in it, and you can come anytime you want to and stay as long as you want. If you don’t have a job or if you drop out of college or something you can come stay there indefinitely.”
    “Thanks.”
    “For years, even. You can, like, live there. We’ll be so happy to have you.”
    “Thanks, Wy.”
    Wyatt sighs. Jesse pictures him rolling over onto his back on his—always—neatly made bed.
    “Are you in your Hef-wear tonight?” she asks.
    “Western,” he says tonelessly. “I’m starting a new John Wayne thing. I can’t believe I have to spend two hours with Howard without you there.” Wyatt’s bossy Ayn Rand voice has subsided. He sounds tired now, and small. “I wish you hadn’t climbed out that idiot window.”
    “I’m sorry.” Jesse feels a sick-guilty knot twist in her stomach. She can’t stand the thought of Wyatt in his thrift-store Western wear sitting on that spindly metal chair at that wobbly round table in that dimly lit café, opposite coldhearted Howard, with no one to sit between them and absorb the bad energy.
    “Hey,” she offers hopefully, “how about I tell you the knock-knocks I was going to tell him, so you can distract him yourself if things gets tense.”
    “Okay,” Wyatt says balefully. “Not that it’ll help.”
    “Knock knock,” Jesse begins.
    “Who’s there?”
    “Interrupting cow.”
    “Interrupting—”
    “MOO!” Jesse yells into the phone.
    A pause. She can hear Wyatt rolling his eyes to the ceiling.
    “Terrible,” he says, smiling. “Terrible.”

4

Emily
    It was almost a year ago that I figured out that we should get corporate sponsorship for this year’s Fall Formal. I was only student council secretary then, so I wasn’t really involved in decision making, but I couldn’t help taking mental notes during last year’s dance and thinking about ways that it could be better. It’s my nature to look at things that way, always trying to figure out how to improve them. I know I’m a perfectionist and some people think I’m too hard on them because of it, but, first of all, I’m not as hard on anyone else as I am on myself, and second of all I think my perfectionism is one of my best assets. It means that I always think really hard about what the right thing to do is, and I try to make decisions that will benefit the most people possible, no matter what project I’m working on. People know that they can trust me to make good choices. That’s why they feel comfortable putting me in positions of responsibility.
    The Fall Formal is student council’s biggest fund-raising