The View from the Top Read Online Free PDF Page B

with his wife.
    Tobin picked up a handful of driveway pebbles and started tossing them at the lawn one by one.
    What was wrong with this town? Why was it that in Normal, most single women went for a sleaze like his dad and the Anabelles of the world went for the Jonahs? It didn’t make any sense. He couldn’t wait to get out of here, to get away from these people, to get his scholarship and go to the conservatory.
    He threw the rocks harder and harder, now aiming them at the gutter pipes along the side of the house. They made a satisfying plink each time they hit.
    Tobin wondered if this was how things worked everywhere. He couldn’t really imagine being as crazy about any girl as he was for Anabelle. But even if he met someone just as incredible as her, he didn’t think he had what it would take to win a girl over. He would never be a Jonah. Did that mean he’d never have a girlfriend?
    He leaned over and picked up the biggest rock he could find—about the size of a harmonica—and, without really thinking, hurled it into a large bay window on the second floor. The glass shattered, leaving a jagged hole in one of the panes.
    Tobin couldn’t believe what he’d just done. He knew he should feel awful, but for some reason he felt a surge of power. Like he could lift a tree out of the ground if he wanted to. And he could wield that tree like a baseball bat, demolishing this entire house—knocking all three stories into the sea.
    Tobin stretched his arms out to his sides, feeling the adrenaline race to his fingertips. He started running around the bushes, angling his body to the left then the right, as if he were a little boy imitating a plane. Then, with a running jump, he did a cartwheel—or his best approximation of one—and then a somersault. He did three of those in a row before tumbling onto his back, out of breath. He inhaled the salty ocean breeze wafting from the shore and looked up at the bushes, black against the dark denim sky. There was something menacing about the shape of them, but he couldn’t place it exactly, until he realized they were cut to look like a couple of bears. One was on its hind legs and the other on all fours. Out there, with no people around, the bears seemed almost real to Tobin, as if they might pounce on him at any second.
    â€œBring it!” he yelled up at them. “I’m all yours!”

{ BURNT Popcorn }
    jonah wilder

    B y the time Jonah’s mom sent him to the health-food store for pumpkin seeds and cascara pills, he had already spent all day peeling the waxy skins off of her fruits and vegetables and making her countless pots of clove-infused tea. She would’ve taken care of the tea herself, she’d told him, but she was too busy washing her hands to death and making sure her finger and toenails were clipped down to the flesh. These were all necessary steps toward ridding herself of the parasite in her intestines. It had been growing there for three days now. Or so she said.
    Jonah’s mom always thought she had something. In fact, it was the antibiotics the doctor had prescribed for her recent “bladder infection” that she blamed for this worm, or whatever it really was that was, uh, giving her bathroom troubles. Not that he even wanted to think about that. Still, he went on his assignment to find her natural laxatives.
    He got to the store just as they were closing and flashed the cute cashier an apologetic smile—a smile with just the right side of his mouth, which he knew made pretty much all girls swoon. “Take your time,” the cashier said, the air from the ceiling fan ruffling her thin bangs. He thought he remembered her from school a few years back—maybe she was a senior when he was a freshman? Lately he’d been finding himself really attracted to older girls, especially ones like this cashier, who could pull off little-girl braids and still look sophisticated. As she rang him up