Read Before I Fall for Free Online Page B

if she has a dad. She lives in one of the shitty rental condos right off the Row. I once heard Andrew Singer saying her bedroom always smelled like General Tso’s chicken.
    “Let’s go in and say hi,” Lindsay says, reaching for my hand.
    I hang back. “I’m going through sugar withdrawal.”
    “Here. Take these.” She pulls a pack of SweeTarts from the waistband of her skirt. Lindsay always carries candy on her, 24/7, like she’s packing drugs. I guess she kind of is. “Just for a second, I promise.”
    I let myself be dragged inside. A bell tinkles as we come through the door. There’s a woman flipping through Us Weekly behind the counter. She looks at us, then looks down again when she realizes we’re not going to order.
    Lindsay slides right up to Alex and Anna’s booth, leaning against the table. She’s kinda, sorta friends with Alex. Alex is kinda, sorta friends with a lot of people, since he deals pot out of a shoe box in his bedroom. He and I have a head-nod friendship, since that’s pretty much the limit of our interaction. He’s actually in English with me, though he shows even less than I do. I guess the rest of the time he’s with Anna. Every so often he’ll say something like, “That essay assignment blows, huh?” but other than that we don’t talk.
    “Hey, hey,” Lindsay says. “You going to Kent’s party tonight?”
    Alex’s face is red and splotchy. At least he’s embarrassed to be caught out with Anna so blatantly. Or maybe he’s just having a reaction to the food. I wouldn’t be surprised.
    “Um…I don’t know. Maybe. Gotta see….” He trails off.
    “It’s gonna be super fun.” Lindsay makes her voice extraperky. “Are you going to bring Bridget? She’s such a sweetheart.”
    Actually, we both think Bridget is annoying—she’s always really cheerful and she wears T-shirts with lame slogans like Unless You’re the Lead Dog the View Never Changes (no lie)—but Lindsay despises Anna and once wrote AC=WT all over the bathroom right across from the cafeteria—the one everyone uses. WT stands for white trash.
    The situation is beyond awkward, so I blurt out, “Sesame chicken?” I point at the meat congealing in a grayish sauce in a bowl on the table, next to two fortune cookies and a sad-looking orange.
    “Orange beef,” Alex says. He seems relieved by the change of topic.
    Lindsay gives me a look, annoyed, but I keep rattling on. “You should be careful about eating here. The chicken once poisoned Elody. She threw up for, like, two days straight. If it was chicken. She swears she found a fur ball in it.”
    As soon as I say this Anna picks up her chopsticks and takes an enormous bite, looking up and smiling at me as she chews so I can see the food in her mouth. I’m not sure whether she’s doing it deliberately to gross me out, but it seems like it.
    “That’s nasty, Kingston,” Alex says, but he’s smiling now.
    Lindsay rolls her eyes, like Alex and Anna are both a total waste of our time. “Come on, Sam.”
    She pockets a fortune cookie and breaks it open when weget outside. “ Happiness is found when one is not looking ,” she reads, and I crack up when she makes a face. She balls up the little slip of paper and lets it flutter to the ground. “Useless.”
    I take a deep breath. “The smell in there always makes me sick.” It does, too: that smell of old meat and cheap oil and garlic. The clouds on the horizon are slowly taking over the sky, turning everything gray and blurry.
    “Tell me about it.” Lindsay puts a hand on her stomach. “You know what I need?”
    “A jumbo cup of The Country’s Best Yogurt!” I say, smiling. TCBY is another thing we can’t bring ourselves to abbreviate.
    “Definitely a jumbo cup of The Country’s Best Yogurt,” Lindsay echoes.
    Even though we’re both freezing, we order double-chocolate soft-serve with sprinkles and crushed peanut butter cups on top, which we eat on our way back to school, blowing on our