Read Online Bright Before Sunrise by Tiffany Schmidt - Free Book Online Page A

to Cross Pointe? All right, let’s go. When we get there we can buy eight-dollar coffees at Bean Haven or try and have a civil conversation with Paul and my mom—it’ll probably be a fascinating discussion about something important like if the landscaper is cutting the lawn too short or their endless debate about whether Paul has enough support to run for a spot on the country club’s board of directors. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?”
    She shakes her hair out of her face and meets my eyes. A lock sticks in her gloppy lip gloss and she frowns as she extracts it and smoothes it behind her ears. She’s wearing large gold hoops, not the ruby studs I saved up to buy for her birthday.
    “You’ve changed.”
    “I haven’t,” I lie.
    “Yes! Yes, you have. You’ve become another Cross Pointe snob and you treat me like I’m not good enough for you anymore.”
    “That’s crap.”
    “Oh, really? Convince me you’re my old Jonah. Tell me one thing that happened at school today—to
you
, not one of your classmates. Tell me one fact about your life.”
    I look away. What good will come from me whining about how I eat lunch in the library because there’s no place for me at the cafeteria’s round tables? How it’s almost physically painful listening to the baseball players who sit near me in bio talk about organizing a father-son summer league? How my math teacher still calls me “Noah”? Or what about how the Empress of Cross Pointe graced me with a lesson on operating my locker?
    “Please?” she says, leaning forward and putting a hand on my knee. “Just talk to me, Jonah.
Please
.”
    I flip my hands palm up in a half shrug. I can either tell her I’m a loser, or I can lose
her
. “I figured out how to lock my locker.”
    “You mean unlock,” she says with an eye roll, pulling away from me.
    “No,
lock
.” I shift in my seat, trying to find a comfortable position where I can face her without the steering wheel impaled in my ribs. “See, in Cross Pointe the lockers—”
    She waves a hand, cutting me off. “Don’t talk down to me.”
    “What?”
    “
In Cross Pointe
,” she mimics with an affected accent. “Please, Jonah, explain to me how lockers work, because since I’m not from Cross Pointe, I’m clearly not smart enough to know.”
    “Forget it.” I’m shaking my head and we’re both sighing. Frustrated exhales that are the only sound in the car.
    “So that’s it? That’s all you can come up with about your day?” It’s an accusation, but I’m not sure what I’m being accused of. And when I try to think of something to share, something that would make today stand out from every other day of invisibility and over-polite refusals to acknowledge my existence, I can’t.
    “Let’s talk about something else. It was just a normal day—nothing happened.”
    “Just because I don’t go to your fancy high school and I’m not headed to an Ivy League college doesn’t make me stupid—” I try to interrupt, but she’s on a roll. “And just because I can’t make out with you in the back of the Jag I gotfor my sixteenth birthday and seduce you with the perfect boobs I got for my seventeenth—or is it the other way around, Jonah? How do Cross Pointe snobs order their lives: cars or plastic surgery first?”
    I laugh. I can’t help it. “Plastic surgery. Then the cars.”
    “Oh, so this is a
joke
to you? I guess you’d know. So tell me: Exactly how many sets of Cross Pointe boobs have you seen?”
    The nail of her pointer finger is inches from my face. I push it away and snap back, “You think I’m cheating? Are you crazy?”
    “We both know you are. At least be man enough to admit it.”
    “That’s such crap. I can’t believe—”
    “Don’t even try to deny it. I found
this
in your backseat last week.” She pulls the bright blue paper back out of her pocket and holds it like a murder weapon.
    I have no clue what’s on it or why it’s made Carly psycho. I take it from her