Read Jumped for Free Online Page A

Check out how fast she spits that: amino acids, proteins, polypeptide bonds. Miss W dates a DJ, for sure. They flip syllables back and forth, fast, fast, fast. I’m picturing it right now.
    When she takes a breather, I jump on the pause and raise my hand to ask a question. Smirks all around. They think I’m going to ask about the lumpy boy sac but I’mover that. I surprise them all.
    â€œHow do they know?” I ask instead.
    â€œExcuse me?”
    That’s what people say when they need a moment to pull it together, but Miss Womack is a brain. You can’t stump the star, so I say it again on the chance she truly missed my question.
    â€œHow do they know, Miss W? How do they know what to do? Where to go? Every little piece breaks down to smaller and smaller pieces. Every little piece is something, does something. And those pieces get together and do it.”
    It’s the way I said “do it” that has the class laughing. But can you imagine? Cells, nucleus, strings, strands, all inside us, doing it. Chatting, hooking up, Xeroxing all the little pieces, making new pieces, making bonds. Isn’t that amazing? Polypeptides bond. Amino acids bond. Even water molecules bond. All those little pieces, smaller than a speck of sand, and they know what to do and they just roll with the flow. They do it.

9
All About the Angle
LETICIA
    D O YOU SEE WHAT I SEE ? I cannot believe my eyes. And no shame or apology whatsoever!
    Mr. Jiang whips out his credit-card-thin cell phone and takes a call in class. He is outright taunting me, like This is a real phone and that fat little girl in your bag needs to diet .
    To borrow one of those teacher sayings, I am appalled. I find his classroom behavior appalling and outrageous and I won’t stand for it. I have to speak up.
    â€œThe No Cell Phone rule applies to you too, Mr. Jiang.”
    He says, “The work on the board applies to you,” turns his back, and chats away, leaving the class to “Oh, snap!” and “Ah-hah” all around me.
    Â 
    Mr. Jiang has every triangle known to man on the board. Right, obtuse, acute, complementary, perpendicular, along with a list of givens. All I have to do is copy them down, but instead of writing “Given: An equilateral triangle is a triangle with all sides equal,” I write, “Given: Bea has more crust than Wonder Bread. A whole loaf of crust.”
    I can’t believe her. You gotta tell her, Leticia .
    Just because you thought you saw something doesn’t mean you actually saw what you thought you saw. No one knows this better than Bea.
    Last semester, she and I were riding the bus, on our way to the MAC counter at Macy’s for makeovers. Call it kismet, but both Bea and I looked out the window in time to see Jay and Krystal standing at the corner face on face. Now, the bus was rolling fast, and we caught them at a funny angle, but that was Jay and that was Krystal and they were closer than they should have been. Bea and Jay been going out since freshman year, so she can spot his face in a grainy four-by-six double-exposed photo with fifty other faces on it. Bea knows her Jay.
    We rang the bell, jumped off the bus, headed straight toward Jay and Krystal. So what if we wasted a fare. Watching Bea catch Jay with his hand in the cookie jar was worth the lost bus fare and half the lip gloss at theMAC counter. Dirt didn’t get any better than this and I had the best seat in the house.
    We were a block away and they saw us. Jay’s head jerked. Then Krystal was backing away.
    Bea—picture this, right, because Bea’s no little girl. She’s packed like I am. So Bea was trotting up to Krystal and then Jay jumped in front of her and said, “It’s not what you think, Bea. It’s not what you think.”
    â€œWhat did I see, Jay? Tell me, what did I just see?” Krystal was down the block but in Bea’s mind she was an inch away so Bea was going after