Read Treasure Island!!! for Free Online

Island
I’ve missed while I sat and signed out her goldfish? I was trying to help her. Now I wonder where I’d be if I’d applied my ingenuity to myself instead of to her Library.”
    “There’s an idea.”
    “The real reason Nancy hates the parrot is because she doesn’t have the guts to go and get
anything
for the Library.”
    “But it’s the money issue too, right? She’d been saving up for her mother’s hip replacement.”
    In the pantry, packed with chickpeas, Cheez-its, and peanut butter pretzels for my parents’ next two hundred guests (they never entertained), I found and broke open a second bag of chips.
    “If I have to, I’ll keep Richard even if it ruins me, even if I have no money to go to the movies or buy clothes or ever go anywhere on the weekend ever. But I’ll tell you what I told Nancy’s voicemail last night: only if she takes the parrot will I let bygones be bygones.”
    “Who’s talking about bygones?” my mother said, coming into the kitchen with a basket of laundry.
    “Who’s picking up fag-ends of conversations?” I said.
    She set her basket down on the kitchen table and, as if I had said nothing at all, began to fold my father’s boxers.
    “I mean, who’s pulling on the line? Dipping without a chip? Fishing without the bait? Cruising without a motor?”
    “Really, sweetie, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    “Exactly,” I said. “Because I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to Adrianna.”
    “Oh,” my mother said, with the pleasure of having successfully translated a scrap of a foreign language, “have I interrupted?”
    “Well, yes. It was kind of a confidential matter.”
    “Okey dokey.” She took her laundry down the hallway and disappeared into her bedroom.
    “What was all
that
about?” Adrianna said. “You pissed at Mom?”
    “I’m not pissed. I just don’t need her knowing my business. Listen,” I said, when I was sure we were in no danger of being overheard. “You don’t happen to have a thousand dollars lying around, do you? That I could borrow?”
    With a scornful glance, Adrianna plunged a shard of pita into the hummus.
     

CHAPTER 7
     
    I ’ve decided to live with Lars,” I told Rena on the telephone.
“Really? I thought you were . . . feeling alienated and . . . thinking of breaking up with him. How did this happen?”
    “What do you mean, happen? We’ve been together for five months. Actually, nine, if you count that impromptu sleepover.”
    “Yes, but . . . Well, how does he feel about it?”
    “He’s thrilled. He’s more domestic than I am. This is what he’s always wanted. Also, I can’t pay the rent on my studio.”
    In an intimate booth at Diamond Dave’s Taco Co., Lars had looked at me over the rim of his large-bowled margarita. “You mean you want us to get a place together?”
    “Do you mind me asking?”
    “Frankly, it’s a relief to not be the one doing all the emotional work,” he said. “I didn’t see it coming though. You’ve been kind of bitchy lately.”
    “Preoccupied,” I amended.
“Mea culpa.”
    “Wow,” said Rena on the telephone, after I had explained my plan to immediately move in to Lars’s recently renovated sublet one-bedroom condo. “Did you even—I mean, did you try asking your family for help?”
    “Well, duh, because what’s the fourth Core Value, Rena?”
    “ HORN-BLOWING ?”
    “That’s four. I meant three. What’s the third Core Value? INDEPENDENCE . Adrianna has no money, only credit card bills. Aunt Boothie already paid for the parrot, and my parents will only loan me money with interest. I still owe them money for the Lasik.”
    “Tough love,” Rena said. “Still, what would be the APR?”
    “The hell if I know,” I said. “I’m not an economist.”
     
    In the beginning, living with Lars was lovely. It didn’t matter if I was kissing him hello, or kissing him goodbye, or reminding him to pay the bill for cable; there was something sweet in all we did,