Read Online DupliKate by Cherry Cheva - Free Book Online

started comparing his numbers to the ones I’d done on my half of the lab. They all checked out.
    “How are those college apps going, anyway?” he asked. Around us, the room buzzed with conversation and random pings and clanks, plus the occasional swear word, as everyone else worked busily. I noticed Anne glancing in our direction again, but now that she had nothing to see but me and Jake talking, she begrudgingly went back to her own project.
    I looked at Jake, surprised. “You actually want to know?”
    “Not really, but if you say they’re going terribly, I can figure out a way to make fun of you. And if you say they’re going great, I can also figure out a way to make fun of you. So it’s sort of a win-win question for me.”
    I gave him a tight little smile. “Heh. Hilarious. They’re going fine, thank you. Or at least they will be once I figure out what the hell I should write my essay about.”
    “Oh, I’m sure you’ll think of something.” Jake yawned and stretched his arms over his head. “Let’s see, you could talk about how you’ve learned that rules are not, in fact, meant to be broken,” he suggested, picking a pencil-size tube of metal from our robot supply box and flipping it through his long, thin fingers. “Or wait, maybe you shouldwrite about the one time you actually”—he paused to mock-gasp—“colored outside the lines. Oh, wait, no, you don’t do that anymore.”
    I reached into his bag, pulled out a marker, and used it to color several large sloppy patches of red on the pages of his open physics textbook.
    “Okay,” he said, pulling the book away from me and looking down at the now-splotchy pages 176 and 177. “Well, good for you. I guess that’s your essay topic right there.”
    “I’m actually thinking something about how my lab partner is a huge pain in the ass.” I took out my calculator, then sighed. “All right, what the hell are we doing here?”
    Jake shrugged, then scooched his chair back and put his feet up on the table. “You’re the smart one—why don’t you tell me?”
    I gingerly picked up one of the robot arms that we’d started putting together yesterday. It immediately fell apart in my hands.
    “You just killed our robot. Guess you’re not the smart one after all.” Jake sighed dramatically.
    “I’m going to answer that by throwing this at your head,” I said, grabbing one of the Ping-Pong balls out of our supply box. And I did.
    After the last bell of the day rang, I took out my phoneto turn the sound back on and noticed a text from my mom. The text said, Are you sick? Call me. Weird.
    I called her back. “Hey Mom, no, I’m not sick, I’m just leaving school now.” I headed for the parking lot, shifting my bag to my other shoulder and almost dropping my phone in the process.
    “Oh, okay,” my mom said, “because Marta, you know, next door called, and…” Dammit. I already knew where this was going. Our next-door neighbor is a retired college professor and she’s home most of the time. She must’ve seen Rina. Which meant that Rina left the house.
    “It must’ve been someone else,” I said flatly, making a beeline to my car and a plan to wring Rina’s neck. “I’ve been at school all day,” I continued. “You can call the attendance office and ask for my record if you want.”
    “I believe you, honey,” my mom said. “You don’t have to sound so defensive.”
    “I’m not being defensive!” Except that I was totally being defensive. Paranoia and panic tend to do that to you, and fury doesn’t exactly help you cover it up. I reached my car door and started a one-handed search through my bag for my car keys, finding lip gloss, a crumpled-up to-do list, and three pens first. I swore under my breath before finally closing my fingers around my scratched-up mini-flashlight key chain.
    “Okay, well, I just wanted to check,” my mom said. “Marta’s getting pretty old,” she added, laughing a little. “I guess she made a