Whiteout Read Online Free PDF Page B

chairs. Mr. Nordoff put down his marking pen and glanced up. Robin’s heart gave a jump. She leaned over and shielded her desk with her arms. She held her breath.
    For one hopeful second, she thought that Mr. Nordoff had gone back to his marking. Then she heard the scrape of his chair and his footsteps as he walked down the aisle.
    April stopped writing and sat very still. Mr. Nordoff stopped beside her desk. He picked up both papers and said in a quiet voice, “If you need help, next time ask.”
    April’s face turned scarlet. Lots of the kids turned around and stared. Robin kept her eyes on the top of her desk. Misery welled inside her.
    Mr. Nordoff went back to the front of the room. He dropped the two worksheets on his desk. “Ten more minutes,” he said.
    The minutes crept by. It was mortifying sitting there with nothing to do. Robin slid her ruler out of her desk and studied the numbers. She peeked sideways at April. Her face was burning, and she was looking at her hands.
    When the class monitors collected the papers, Robin pretended not to care that she didn’t have one. She made herself busy, scooping up loose pencil shavings from the front of her desk and putting them in her pencil box.
    When the lunch bell rang, April muttered, “I’m going to the washroom.”
    “I—,” began Robin.
    “I know the way,” said April.
    Robin made her lunch last as long as possible. She kept one eye on the door. Soon everyone else had headed outside or to the computer lab, except for Kim, who pulled her chair up beside Robin’s and unwrapped a package of cheese and crackers. She settled comfortably into her favorite topic, her birthday party. “So, what do you want? Hawaiian or pepperoni?”
    “What?”
    “The pizza. For...the...party.” Kim spoke in an exaggerated slow voice.
    “I don’t care.”
    Where had April gone? No one could take that long in the washroom. And she would be starving by now, because she had refused to eat anything for breakfast.
    “I guess I’ll ask for both kinds,” sighed Kim. “And Bryn’s bringing CDs. She’s got the most.”
    “April has lots of CDs,” said Robin.
    An odd look flickered across Kim’s face. Suddenly she seemed to be concentrating very hard on folding her waxed paper.
    “I’ll ask her to bring them,” Robin said.
    “She’s not invited,” said Kim in a low voice.
    Robin felt like she’d been kicked. “What?”
    Kim glanced at the door. “I can only have five people.”
    “You never said that before.”
    “It’s Mom’s new rule. And she means it. And anyway, I never said that April was invited. You just assumed...” Kim’s voice trailed away.
    “Of course I assumed . April is my cousin and she’s living with me.”
    “Really. I hadn’t heard.” Kim’s face was white.
    Robin felt rigid with anger. “I don’t believe this. You know what the problem is? You don’t like April. You never have.”
    “April’s okay,” said Kim slowly. “Though you can’t exactly call her friendly. But I just want kids that I know really well at my party.”
    Robin’s heart started to pound. “That’s mean.”
    “Then I’m mean,” said Kim. “I’m going outside.”
    She made a lot of noise packing up her lunch stuff, and then she was gone.
    Robin swallowed. She couldn’t believe what had just happened.
    Fine. If April wasn’t going to the party, she wasn’t going either. It was that simple.
    Robin tested the idea in her head. She felt sick. She stuffed the rest of her lunch back in her bag and went in search of her cousin.
    In last period, Mr. Nordoff announced a special project.
    “It’s called imagery. Words that mean something different than they say. We use imagery all the time without even thinking about it. When we say things like, The cat’s got your tongue . You drive me up the wall . I caught your eye.”
    Robin had a sinking feeling that this was not going to be an ordinary project. Mr. Nordoff produced an ice-cream pail full of strips of