Read Online Sleeping Jenny by Aubrie Dionne - Free Book Online Page B

planning for the Autumn Ball festivities, Maxim’s voice hissed behind me, “What do you mean, doomed?”
    I turned around. “My bottom row of teeth is so crooked that it looks like some little mouth-gnome kicked them all in. My eyelashes are nonexistent, and I can’t even understand the first General Relativity class.”
    I stopped, my mouth hanging open. Why was I telling him this? I almost died. I’d just vomited all my insecurities to the hottest guy in school.
    â€œYou don’t need all those extra enhancements.” Maxim leaned forward. “You’re special, Jennifer.”
    Was I hallucinating due to too much sappy sauce? I had tried more than usual at Pell’s insistence. “Special? Because I’m over three hundred years old?”
    â€œNo, because you don’t look like anyone here.” His hand rose up and touched my hair, spreading it out in a veil. The falling hair tickled the side of my face and my scalp tingled. “No one has hair this color. It reminds me of sunlight in the morning on a day when all the smog has blown away.”
    I froze, utterly speechless. What do you say when a gorgeous guy recites something like poetry just for you? Am I hearing things as well? He did have a point. Back in 2012, most of the people in Maine were Caucasian and pale. Now the population in the formerly backwoods state looked more like Boston, with a wide array of ethnicities.
    The techno bell rang as it always did—at the most inconvenient moment—and everyone shot up from their desks. Maxim shouldered his backpack and his tone turned trivial, like we’d just talked about last night’s homework assignment. “Besides, I can help you with that Einstein business. See you at lunch.”
    I couldn’t wait until lunch. General Relativity dragged by as if time had stopped. I knew what that felt like, right? The guy that had called me bothead fell asleep on his screendesk, drooling, and I found a way to scribble concentric circles with my fingernail on the sides of the screen and erase them when the teacher walked by. Some of the concepts were actually pretty neat—our universe was still expanding, which would mean endless possibilities for other signs of life. Aliens. Although I’d joked about it with Mom and Timmy, I wished I’d been woken up when there were aliens. Anything would be better than Exara.
    Just when I thought I’d die of waiting, the techno jingle rang and I filed into the lunchroom. Maxim sat in the same spot as yesterday. He smiled, his perfect white teeth gleaming. He even had a chin dent.
    I wanted to kiss it. Wasn’t like I’d kissed anything in my life besides stuffed animals and Timmy’s cheek.
    â€œGet through General Relativity okay?”
    I sat across from him and took out my lunch container, this time packed by C-7 because Len was running late. “Yeah. It was interesting today.”
    â€œGood. See. You’ll adjust to life here just fine. You just have to give us a chance.”
    I pulled out a container of some gelatinous blue stuff that jiggled. “Jenny. That’s what my friends call me.”
    â€œJenny. I like the sound of that.”
    I sporked the Smurf food and stuffed it in my mouth. The spoonful wiggled on my tongue, tasting like mint. “It’s the plainest name in all of America.”
    â€œNowadays, with names like XoXo and Shizznizz, it’s one of a kind.”
    I covered my mouth to stop my slimy food from spewing all over the lunch table. “Shizznizz? Really?”
    â€œYeah.” He pointed across the cafeteria. “See that guy over there, the one with the orange hair?”
    I scanned the table across the room. A guy leaned back in his seat, banging his spork on the table and listening to some jack in his ear. “Yeah.”
    â€œShizznizz O’Riley. I’m not kidding ya.”
    â€œJeez. What were his parents