Read Online Cracked Up to Be by Courtney Summers - Free Book Online Page B

is.
    “No.”
    I’ve been tracing the same rocks for the last thirty minutes.
    “Come on,” Jake says. “I’m going to make you tolerate me if it kills me. Or you. Preferably you. But we should get to know each other on some level or else it will be impossible to work on this together.”
    “I don’t know; it’s working okay so far. And besides, what about you could I possibly want to know?”
    “Try me. I will hold nothing back.”
    I decide to shock him into silence.
    “Which do you prefer: top or bottom?”
    His mouth drops open a little and I go back to my rocks. Mission accomplished.
    “Up,” he says unexpectedly. “Against the wall.”
    I laugh, my pencil hovering above the paper. “Right.”
    “Top.”
    I glance at him. “Really?”
    “With my last girlfriend,” he says. “More often than not.”
    “Sure. She still in the picture, this last girlfriend?”
    “Dumped me when I told her I was moving.”
    “Ouch.”
    “Eh.” Jake shrugs and works on the base of a tree stump. “We were together too long. How long were you and Chris together?”
    “Why would I tell you that?”
    “Because we agreed—”
    “No, we didn’t.”
    His eyebrows come together as he replays the conversation in his head and realizes I’m right, but I decide to go ahead and share because what I’ve chosen to share might make him realize I’m not a person worth getting to know. Get him off my back.
    “Actually, Chris and I were together since the ninth grade. We broke up after I stole about three hundred dollars from his savings account. Let that be a lesson to you, Jake: never give your high school sweetheart your PIN number, no matter how many times you’ve had sex or been Winter Ball King and Queen.”
    And that’s not even the worst thing I’ve done. Jake studies me.
    “Wow,” he finally says. “Why’d you do that?”
    “Gambling addiction,” I say without missing a beat. “I spent all my money and some of his betting on horses and racked up a little debt. After a while Chris goes, ‘Look, Parker, I’m not giving you any more money!’ So I stole it from him.”
    “Actually, she ran away from home.”
    I plaster a bright smile on my face before turning around.
    “Chris!” I say, all exaggerated cheer when I do. “And just how long have you been standing there?”
    “Obviously long enough!” he says with a similarly exaggeratedly cheerful voice. He pushes past me, for Jake. “Anyway, Jake, I’m not going to be in the gym at lunch, so take center. Tell the guys I said you could. Aaron will want it, but I want to make Aaron cry like a little bitch for being such an asshole last Thursday.”
    Jake nods. “Center. Got it. Where will you be?”
    “Nowhere special.”
    “Nowhere special” is a pretty apt description of the boys’ changing room. Its rows of orange-painted lockers and square windows that filter weak rays of real light into the room—real light that’s promptly swallowed by the fluorescent lights overhead.
    And it smells bad.
    Chris is sitting on the bench closest to the door when I sneak in. There’s a binder resting beside him—math homework. At least it better be.
    “What if someone comes in?” My voice echoes around the room.
    Chris stands, drags the bench to the tiny alcove where the door is and wedges it in such a way that no one should be able to get in. There was definitely a time when he wouldn’t have cared if anyone caught us in here—and we’d been caught a few times—but now he’s with Becky and those days are dead.
    “So.” I clear my throat. “How many pages of math will this be worth?”
    He nods to the bench. I sit. He sits beside me.
    This is the skankiest thing I’ve ever done.
    I try to ignore how it starts with his hands carefully coming up past my cheeks and around my neck until his fingers are in my hair. He doesn’t kiss me then, but he brings his face close, forehead against mine, and breathes me in because he wants me to feel guilty, I think.