Very LeFreak Read Online Free PDF Page B

lounge.
    He got the message.

CHAPTER 4
    End-of-March Madness, or,
Men Who Frequent the Library
When They Should Be Watching College Basketball
    Great. Now another awesomely cheesy song owned Very’s soul.
Since you been gone
I can breathe for the first time
    Very kept her head down low as she passed through the majestic marble entrance to Butler Library, but she couldn’t fail to notice the many students passing her and flashing her the thumbs-up signal and Hello waves. Very smiled in regal acknowledgment but spoke to no one as she approached the back elevator. She needed to study and not be distracted by friend or flirt prospects. Seriously. She dodged the hormone-racing enclave of the Main Reading Room, headed straight to her secret hiding spot in the remotest corner on the top floor of the library, and sat herself down in her favorite musty cubicle. It was the one campus sanctuary where she could truly hide, and finally get some studying accomplished. Sweetly, since March Madness had reached the Sweet Sixteen round, the library was relatively empty, and Very had her choice of quiet spots.
Out of the darkness and into the sun …
And breakaway … lalalalalalala .
    Truly. How had people survived before the iPod?
    Very was an hour into studying before she was aware that another soul lurked in the darkest crevice at the back of the sixth-floor stacks in Butler Library. Startled to feel a tap on her shoulder, Very looked up to see a pissed-off guy standing in the library aisle. He banged his hands against his ears, the universal code for Turn the Fucking Music Down .
    Very hit the Stop button on her music, but did not take off her headphones. “Sorry, dude,” she whispered to Angry Man. “I didn’t realize the music was so loud. I’ll turn it down.”
    She hit the Play button again and returned to staring at the book on her desk. She hated postmodern art. She wanted her art in the form of sly smiles and bare buttocks and heaving bosoms, please. Geez. She could paint splotches just as easily as that Jackson Pollock guy. Where was her exhibition at the Met?
    Concentrate, Very , she told herself. She needed a 3.0 grade point average to maintain the New Haven Benevolence Society scholarship that was the primary source, after student loans and part-time jobs, funding her Columbia education. Very teetered at 2.7, based on midterm grades. But one mind-blowingly good Art History term paper, and Very could get to 3.0. She could.
    Loud cough. Louder than the pop song’s guilty-pleasure wail.
    Very looked up from her book again. Why was Angry Man still standing there?
    Very turned the volume down and took the headphones off. “What?” she asked him.
    “You were singing very loudly, too,” he said.
    She inspected him more closely. He looked grad student age—ruffled hair, bewildered expression, Ivy League tweedy. Totally, legitimately old enough to buy the kegs for future parties Very might be commissioned to throw.
    “And you’re complaining because of my taste in music or because I was making too much noise?” Very asked.
    “Both,” he said.
    “I take requests,” she advised.
    He laughed. “I’ll take early Britney Spears, please?”
    “Song or dance moves?”
    “Wow, hadn’t thought about it in those advanced terms. How ‘bout both?”
    Jackson Pollock was so very boring. Time for a study break.
    Very spun the wheel on her music player to the appropriate song, then spun the chair she’d been sitting on out from under her. She didn’t have the outfit or, quite frankly, the body, but she could still perform a damn impressive rendition of Britney’s “Oops! … I Did It Again” dance routine. “I played with your heart, got lost in the game,” Very sang, but in a polite whisper so as not to disturb any other potential study-lurkers in the back cavern of the library.
    The stranger applauded her act.
    Oh baby, baby .
    This was the problem. Very could recite song lyrics at whim, remember the step-by-step