The Sweet Revenge of Celia Door Read Online Free PDF Page B

won’t tell anyone.”
    “Thanks,” said Drake, moving to sit down next to me on the log again. “Okay, your turn. Now you have to tell me something.”
    I swear I almost told Drake right then, all about eighth grade and Sandy and the Book. It was the perfect moment with a secret hanging out on my tongue just waiting to sprout wings and fly out of my mouth. But a familiar black hole started to open in my chest sucking my words away into it. What if I told him the truth and he didn’t like me anymore? He was staying for only a month, but a friend for a month was better than no friend at all. I needed him too much to be honest with him.
    “I write poetry,” I blurted out.
    “Oh, cool,” said Drake, sounding only mildly disappointed with my tame secret. “Will you read it to me sometime?”
    A little light started to flicker in my chest where the black hole had been. I nodded.

CHAPTER

    9
     
    Before I left his house to walk home, Drake asked me if I wanted to walk to school together the next day. So, Friday morning, the end of our first week of ninth grade, I showed up at the park in our neighborhood at eight a.m. I was there a few minutes early, hoping to get to school in time to exchange my library book before first period. I hadn’t read all of
Foreignisms
because it was a bit like reading the phone book, but I did pick up some good words and felt I could ethically move on to the 500s class of the Dewey decimal system. I sat on a swing to wait for Drake.
    I don’t have a cell phone. I had one, briefly, when my dad left for Atlanta and bought me one, saying we could “keep in touch better.” But I left it in my hoodie pocket and accidentally washed it and that was the end of my connectivity. Mom said, “No more cell phone until you make enough money to replace that one. You’re old enough to babysit.” This particular attempt to teach me responsibility reeked of hypocrisy because she loses things more than anyone. Since the only people who called me were my mom and dad, I decided to teach a lesson of my own and not bother to earn money for a replacement. Now my dad mostly emails, and my mom has to deal with not being able to contact me whenever she wants.
    Waiting for Drake in the park, I checked the time on the digital watch I got at the thrift store. It told me Drake was running late. I started pushing my feet back and letting myself swing casually forward, then twirling side to side, looking down the street in the direction of Drake’s house and then up the street toward school. At ten minutes after eight, I started to get a bad feeling. Maybe I didn’t react well enough to Drake being gay. Maybe he was hoping that I was gay, too, and now that he knew I wasn’t, he wasn’t all that interested in me. Maybe he just wanted someone to practice coming out to and I had served my purpose. It’s not like it really mattered, since he was going back to New York soon anyway, and I would go back to being a lone wolf again, no friend in sight.
    I used to have a best friend in middle school, from sixth to eighth grade. Ruth and I found each other at the public library the weekend after school started, both reading
The Egypt Game
on a sunny Saturday afternoon. We fell into a conversation about the book and didn’t climb out of it for two hours.
    Ruth’s family was religious, and she wasn’t allowed to watch television or wear pants. She wore long white dresses and a blonde braid that hung to her waist. She also wasn’t allowed to have sleepovers or go to the mall, so our friendship, although intensely close, was limited.
    One of the ways we connected was by reading the same book and trying to stay on the same page so that neither one of us gave away plot points. Sometimes she would call to say, “I couldn’t stop myself and I read a hundred more pages after dinner.” I would have to stay up late to catch up. One time I was so sick with the flu that I couldn’t hold up a book, and Ruth read to me over the