Read Online Bumped by Megan McCafferty - Free Book Online Page B

splattering a spoonful of batter across her nightgown.
    “It’s just Ash and Ty,” I croak. “Right on time for their a.m. stalking.”
    Every school day at seven a.m., my parents shout at me until I turn on the 2Vu to confirm I’m keeping myself alive in their absence.
    “PELL-MEL. PELL-MEL. PELL-MEL.” So goes the chant in the other room.
    “If I don’t respond within two minutes, they call 911.”
    “It’s nice that they care,” Harmony says.
    “Yeah,” I snort. “That’s one way of looking at it.”
    Between the wake-up calls, the 24/7 stalk app, and the GUARDIAN (Guaranteed Under-Age Remote Detection of Illegal Alcohol and Narcotics) monitor, my parents are far more oppressive when they’re on the other side of the world than when they’re right down the hall.
    When Harmony makes a move with me toward the common room, I suggest that she stay in the kitchen instead.
    “Don’t you want them to meet me?” she asks, a wounded expression on her face.
    “I do,” I say. “Just not right now.” This is true. I barely have the time or energy to deal with the standard-issue Ash and Ty interrogation. I know I can’t handle a grilling over the one girl in the world who could do the most damage to my uniqueness quotient.
    “They know about me . . . right?” she asks in a fragile voice.
    “ Of course they know about you.”
    From the look of relief on her face, it’s clear that she interprets the “of course” as proof of the value I place on our relationship.
    I don’t have the heart to tell her that “of course” has nothing to do with me and everything to do with my parents’ “no secrets” policy, or that they came to find out about her as they discover most things: through high-tech surveillance. After they tracked my MiChat minutes and freaked out about all the incoming calls from Goodside, they jumped to ludicrous conclusions and confronted me with the “evidence” in their usual tag-teaming style.
    “We won’t stand back and let you run off with a Church boy!” warned Ash.
    “We didn’t prep you for all these years to lose you to a quiverfilling cult!” snapped Ty.
    They were for seriously convinced that I’d fallen in with the evangelical crowd as an exercise in teen rebellion. Their accusations were so off-the-spring crazy that I hoped the truth—that I had been found by my identical twin sister raised by Churchies in Goodside—would strike them almost as anticlimactic by comparison. I was, of course, wrong. They didn’t ask a single question as to the impact such an astounding discovery would have on me emotionally , but immediately started debating the impact Harmony could have on me financially .
    “You’re certain she’s not on the market,” Ash said.
    “She’s engaged to be married,” I assured them.
    “She could counterfeit and undercut you,” Ty coldly pointed out.
    “It’s against her religion,” I told them.
    My parents made me promise to limit my contact with Harmony until after I bumped, which, you know, should be any day now. And I did. Or I tried to anyway. Until she showed up on my doorstep.
    Harmony’s very existence has the potential to raise too many questions about my family history, a mysterious mess that Lib has taken it upon himself, as my RePro Rep, to handle with the utmost skill. And only when absolutely necessary, sketchiness . Gah. If Lib knew Harmony was here he’d drop dead on the spot. And if he knew I’d taken her to the Meadowlands Mallplex yesterday and that she was flipping pancakes in my kitchen at this moment, he’d raise himself up from the grave just for the satisfaction of dropping dead again. He loves drama, but not when it gets in the way of business.
    Meanwhile Harmony is unaware of the havoc she’s wreaked, first by contacting me, and again by coming to stay. She seems pretty much oblivious to just about everything right now, as she smiles into space and dreamily traces her fingers along the sticky batter spiderwebbing