The Whole Story of Half a Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

away. He stops rubbing and smiles a sheepish smile.
    “It was okay.”
    “Just okay?” Mom says.
    “Yeah. I kind of got lost in the morning.”
    “How lost?” Dad asks.
    “I couldn’t find my homeroom and then the gym teacher helped me.”
    “Doesn’t sound too bad. How are your teachers?” he asks.
    “Okay, I guess. My English teacher said she’s going to give us lots of vocabulary tests.” And her dress was ugly and she sort of looks like a pig, I want to say. And my day wasn’t okay; it made me feel like an alien from Mars.
    I lost sight of Kate as we herded into the cafeteria like sheep. By the time I spotted her again, she was already surrounded by a bunch of girls in my class, all talking and laughing. She looked up and noticed me but didn’t say anything, not a wave, not a smile. I certainly wasn’t going to plop myself down in the middle of all her matching-shirt friends.
    Then I saw a table to the left where a girl was sittingalone, writing in a notebook. She was in my English class too. Something made me want to ask her what she was writing. Suddenly I didn’t care about Kate or anyone else, so I tugged up my jeans and went over to her.
    “Can I sit here?” I asked.
    She looked up from her notebook, gave me the once-over, and nodded.
    “Hey, is that the Eiffel Tower?” she asked.
    “Yeah,” I said, sitting down across from her.
    “Did you go there?”
    “Last spring with my parents.”
    “Wow! Was it the most romantic place in the world?”
    She put her elbows on the table, rested her chin on her hands, and closed her eyes for a few seconds. I wasn’t sure if Paris was romantic, but it had lots of parks and cool old buildings and a river that ran through the entire city. And once, at night after dinner, when we were walking by the river, the Eiffel Tower suddenly lit up and sparkled like a million stars. That was my favorite part of Paris. Come to think of it, though, Mom and Dad did a lot of hand-holding in Paris, which they never do at home, so maybe it was romantic.
    “It was really pretty,” I said.
    “When I get older, I’m going to live there and be a writer,” she said, and patted her notebook as she closed it. Her name was written in big black letters on the front:
Alisha Brooks
.
    “I want to be a writer too—a journalist—and travel all over the world,” I told her. My body relaxed. Even my smashed sandwich started tasting better. I was about to ask her what she wrote about, but a group of kids descended on our table. In seconds everything became a swirling blur of orange lunch trays, laughter, and metal chairs scraping the floor.
    Nobody seemed to mind that I was sitting at the table. Actually, nobody seemed to notice me. But I noticed me. I was used to being darker-skinned than everyone at Community except for Marshal, whose parents are from Trinidad, but everyone at this table made me stick out like a ghost. The kids who sat here were black, while all the other tables were filled with white kids. Alisha told some of the other kids that I had been to Paris. They seemed less impressed but asked me some questions, mostly about the Eiffel Tower. I answered, ate my sandwich, and tried not to think of Community. Or why the white kids and black kids didn’t sit together here. Or where you were supposed to sit if you were too dark to be white and too light to be black? And that was how my day went.
    “Well, don’t worry,” Mom says. “These things take time. It’ll get easier.”
    “Dad?” I ask. “Would you call yourself black or white?”
    Dad puts down his fork and coughs a little. Mom freezes in mid-bite. Natasha even looks up from mashing her broccoli to bits.
    “Why? Did something happen at school?” Dad says, and moves around in his chair a little.
    “Nope. Just wondering.”
    “Neither,” he says. “I’m Indian.”
    “But if you had to pick one,” I say.
    “White, I guess.”
    “But you’re not white,” I say.
    “I’m not black either. Indian