The Trouble with Emily Dickinson Read Online Free PDF Page A

her own cup of yogurt.
    Kendal looked down at her runny eggs, cooked
over-easy, complemented with potatoes and bacon. She then eyed
Christine’s yogurt. “At least I eat,” she retorted.
    “I eat! I just choose to eat healthy.”
Christine grabbed her spoon and licked the yogurt off of it.
“Excuse me if I’m not lucky enough to have your turbo
metabolism.”
    “I can’t help it if I burn through food like
it’s jet fuel.” Kendal picked at her eggs. “I’m so glad I decided
to get a tutor for Women’s Literature.”
    “Speaking of which, who did you land this
time? I hope it wasn’t that Asian kid with the horrible acne
again.”
    “God, no,” Kendal said quickly. “It’s JJ
something or other. She’s on the basketball team. You’ve probably
seen her around school. She hangs around with that rich girl with
the weird name, Queenie or something.”
    Christine hacked and coughed as if she was
about to spit her yogurt back up. “You have no luck with tutors at
all!” she gasped.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, look at your track record. First you
get that weird guy with the lazy eye, then the girl who spit when
she talked, then Asian acne boy and now to top it off, a
lesbian.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Kendal!” Christine’s eyes widened. “She’s
gay. So is half of the basketball team.” She spooned out the rest
of her yogurt with her index finger and licked it off. “C’mon, you
seriously didn’t know? I swear it amazes me how naïve you can
be.”
    Kendal picked up a piece of bacon, “I’m not
naïve. I just never suspected.”
    “It’s so obvious,” Christine continued.
    Kendal felt a sourness growing in her
stomach. The appetite she’d been bragging about moments earlier had
completely vanished. She had suspected that JJ was different
somehow, especially the way she paused in mid-conversation around
her or when Kendal had caught her staring. But she had stared back
at JJ. She’d even smiled back in a way that was more than friendly.
But if JJ was gay, did that mean that she—?
    “Has she hit on you yet?” Christine
prodded.
    Kendal practically threw the piece of bacon
back down on her plate. “Will you stop it?”
    “What? I’m sure she thinks you’re hot. I
mean, everyone at this school thinks you’re hot.”
    “She helps me with homework, that’s it.
That’s what a tutor does.”
    “Well, I’d just be careful if I were you,”
Christine advised. “Don’t give her your phone number, or she might
start texting you. And make sure that you don’t sit too close to
her or anything.”
    Kendal immediately thought of them sitting at
the table in the library where she and JJ usually shared a book of
poetry and how she’d accidentally brushed up against JJ on more
than one occasion over the past couple of weeks. She thought of how
JJ had mentioned that Dickinson could have been in love with
another woman.
    She shifted uncomfortably in her chair as she
thought about their last tutoring session, when they talked about
Dickinson’s “wild nights” and who she might have been writing
about. She thought about the questions JJ had asked her, about the
feeling of their locked hands, and about her own response. She felt
dizzy and lightheaded.
    Christine began to gossip with the other
girls at their table as if nothing had happened. The conversation
eventually swung to the coming evening events, and Kendal pretended
to listen while a strange curiosity engulfed her, giving her knots
in her stomach.
     
     

CHAPTER 6
     
    Kyan Stevens grunted as he lifted the
fifty-pound barbell with his left hand.
    He counted silently. Five. Four. Three. Two.
One.
    His tanned torso was covered with a black
muscle shirt and he wore a pair of matching black mesh shorts. The
sandy hair that normally hung just above his eyes was held back now
by a black bandana. A tattoo of barbwire circled his left leg
around the calf muscle. And the diamond-studded earrings in his
ears sparkled in the