White Cat Read Online Free PDF Page B

Philip with a quick, quelling look in my direction. “And there’s no music, Maura. No music, okay?”
    Maura hums a little as she starts collecting the plates.
    “Are you okay?” I ask her.
    “She’s fine,” says Philip. “She’s tired. She gets tired.”
    “I’m going to go do my homework,” I say, and when neither of them stops me, I go upstairs to Philip’s office in the loft. The couch is made up with new sheets, and the blankets she promised are piled on one end, so freshly washed that I smell the laundry detergent. Sitting in the leather chair in front of the desk, I spin around and switch on the computer.
    The screen flickers to life, revealing a background screen littered with folders. I open a browser window and check myemail. Audrey sent me a message.
    I click so fast that it opens twice.
    “Worried about u,” it reads. That’s it. She didn’t even sign her name.
    I met Audrey the beginning of freshman year. She usually sat on the cement wall of the parking lot at lunch, drinking coffee and reading old Tanith Lee paperbacks. One time it was Don’t Bite the Sun . I’d read it too; Lila had loaned it to me. I told her I liked Sabella better.
    “That’s because you’re a romantic,” she said. “Guys are romantic—no, really. Girls are pragmatic.”
    “That’s not true,” I told her, but sometimes, after we started dating, I wondered if she was right.
    It takes me twenty minutes to write back to her: “Home for wk. Looking forward to lotsa daytime tv.” I hope that it conveys the right amount of nonchalance; it certainly took long enough to fake.
    Finally, I hit send and groan, feeling stupid all over again.
    Most of the rest of my email that isn’t spam are links to the video of me clinging to the Smythe roof that someone already uploaded to YouTube, and a few messages from teachers, giving me the week’s assignments. I take the latter as a sign that all is not lost in terms of getting back into Wallingford, despite the former. I still have last night’s homework to finish too, but before I start, I want to figure out how I’m going to convince the school to forget all about the incident on the roof. After a little bit of Googling, I find two sleep specialists within an hour’s drive. I print out both addresses and save both logos as jpgs on my flash drive. It’s a start. I take it for granted that nodoctor is going to put his reputation on the line to guarantee I won’t sleepwalk again, but I can find a way around that.
    I am feeling pretty cocky, so I decide to tackle weaseling out of Grandad’s cleaning plan. I call Barron’s cell. He answers on the second ring, sounding out of breath.
    “You busy?” I ask.
    “Not too busy for my brother who almost took a nosedive. So, what happened?”
    “I had a weird dream and started sleepwalking again. It was nothing, but now I’m stuck at Philip’s mercy until the school realizes that I’m not going to kill myself.” I sigh. Barron and I were on the outs when we were kids, but now he’s practically the only person in my family I can really talk to.
    “Philip pissing you off?” Barron says.
    “Let’s put it this way: If I stay here long enough, I am going to kill myself.”
    “The important thing is that you’re okay,” Barron says, which is satisfying, if patronizing.
    “Can I come stay with you?” I ask. Barron’s at Princeton, studying pre-law, which is pretty funny because he is a compulsive liar. He’s the kind of liar who totally forgets what he told you the last time, but he believes every single lie with such conviction that sometimes he can convince you of it. I don’t think he’ll last half a minute in court before he’ll make up something outrageous about his client.
    “I’d have to ask my roommate,” he says. “She’s dating this ambassador, and he’s always sending a car to take her to New York. She might not want more stress.”
    Yeah, like that. “Well, if she’s not there a lot, maybe