What Every Girl (except me) Knows Read Online Free PDF

it.
    I started to nibble my cookie as it spun on the tip of my finger but quickly decided against this method of eating. I didn’t know if Mrs. Tyler had seen me yet or not.
    I had this feeling Mrs. Tyler didn’t like me, already. It was something about the way she looked at me later, when Taylor and I were playing Monopoly in the family room. I got a little carried away making jokes about the car and the top hat, and I was a little loud, again. Mrs. Tyler walked by just as I said “brang” instead of “brought,” and she corrected me. My dad had always corrected me on that, too, and I hadn’t done it for years until, of course, just then.
    My dad was supposed to pick me up on his way home from the university, and around five o’clock I heard him beep his horn. I could tell Mrs. Tyler didn’t approve of that, either.
    “My dad’s here,” I said, moving to get my shoes on. “Yes, I hear the beeping.”
    “Well, Thursdays are his student critiques and he’s probably real tired,” I explained (I lied—his crits were on Wednesdays), and then at the same time I felt further inclined to entice Mrs. Tyler with something interesting about me.
    “And he gets up at five thirty in the morning to paint, so he’s extra, extra tired.”
    “Oh, what kind of paintings does your father do?” she asked me.
    “Oil paintings. Landscapes mostly. Cows and clouds and stuff,” I said.
    I looked up from the floor, where I was busy tying my laces, to see if I had made an impression. From this angle Mrs. Tyler seemed immense. Looming tall. But yes, she seemed interested.
    “Well, Gabby, it was nice to meet you,” she said, opening the door. “We’ll see you again soon, I hope.”
    “Bye, Gabby,” Taylor said. “See you tomorrow in school.”
    I remembered to say “Thank you for having me” to Mrs. Tyler, and right before I got into my dad’s car I turned to Taylor and said, “I looove the chocolate glaze.”
    Taylor laughed. Mrs. Tyler looked puzzled. I saw Taylor turn inside her house without explaining the joke to her mother. Maybe this time it wouldn’t matter what her mother thought of me.

Chapter 8
    I was studying Cleo as we drove to the new mall in Poughkeepsie. With her arms bent and her hands on the steering wheel, Cleo’s elbows did not look so wrinkled. She wore a thin line of brown eyeliner on her upper lids, a pale lip gloss, and other than that nothing that I could detect. Cleo wasn’t the makeup kind. She wasn’t the dress-up kind, either, which was funny since she designed clothing. Cleo had her own line of shirts and pants with her drawings on the arms or legs or in the center of her sack-of-potatoes dresses (there was no other way to describe them). Mostly she had pictures of leaves or tree branches or what looked like animal bones on her clothing. All natural things that you might find walking through the woods.
    Cleo had given me one of her T-shirts the first time I met her. The T-shirt had tiny falling leaves on the sleeve and one on the front like it had just landed there by accident. But I left it in gym once and someone stole it. I was afraid to tell Cleo, but so far she hadn’t asked why I never wear that shirt. Now, driving to the mall, it seemed like years ago, though it was probably just about ten months before I first met Cleo. I suppose I was getting used to her.
    “Maybe there’ll be some of those ladies with baskets giving out free stuff right by the door,” I said. I stopped staring at Cleo. We were getting close to the mall now.
    There was a Saks Fifth Avenue at this mall that Cleo said would probably have lots of winter coats on sale. She said by November the stores are getting rid of their winter stuff and getting ready for the mid-winter cruise crowd, as in ocean liners to the Caribbean. Whatever.
    “Oh, goody. You mean those women who squirt you with perfume when you walk by?” Cleo scrunched up her face.
    “Yeah, the ones that look like mannequins when they stand