Read Online The Difference Between You and Me by Madeleine George - Free Book Online

be the first time they’ve seen each other since the Spirit Assembly Bathroom Incident, and Jesse has been working on some choice words she wants to say. Jesse picks up the pace a little and lengthens her stride, and Wyatt skips to keep up with her. She has already told him twice—though he’s pretended not to hear—that she can’t actually hang out today.
    “We were chatting like perfect ladies, very civilized,” Wyatt continues. “I was lulled into a sense of false security.He hardly even asked me anything about myself, he didn’t make one snide comment about the homeschooling, he didn’t ask me whether my mother was taking her meds, he just went on and on telling me this insanely dull story about Stepmama Louise and her epic battles with the bunny rabbits who live in their backyard and eat her flowers—apparently, she started out poisoning them with rat bait, but now she’s using, like, a blowtorch on them, shooting them with flames off the side of the deck. And I was all, ‘Ha-ha, that Louise is a real spitfire, ha-ha, what a great assassin of bunny rabbits Louise is,’ and then he paid and we left the café, and I was like, oh my God, he’s not even going to mention it, I’m home free, this is the dawning of a new era. And then right when we got to the car he was like, ‘So, did you get the literature I sent you?’”
    “Oh no, the ex-gay pamphlets?”
    “The ones I shredded.”
    “What did you say?”
    “I told him they were too pornographic for me so I threw them out.”
    “You told him they were
pornographic
?” Jesse wails.
    “They have a half-naked man on the cover! He’s hanging up there on that cross all muscular and cut with nothing but a little gym towel on—it’s pornographic!”
    “He must have gone ballistic.”
    “Worse, he was totally calm. He said, ‘Son, I’m askingyou to please reckon with your choices. I don’t want you to spend eternity paying for your sins in hell.’ I said to him, ‘Howard, thank you so much for the advice, but I’ll take my chances.’”
    “The point of these dates is to be
nice
to him so he’ll still pay for college, not to antagonize him and make him want to disown you forever.”
    “I know, but I couldn’t help myself, he’s such an irrational idiot. And my comic sidekick wasn’t there to support me.”
    “I’m sorry,” Jesse repeats. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ll be there next time, I swear.”
    “Saturday the thirtieth, okay? Ten thirty a.m.” Wyatt steps in front of Jesse and puts his hands on her shoulders so he can stare deeply into her eyes. His dark, tendrilly curls are wild around his pale face. In his red-and-white-checked thrift-store Western shirt with the silver-buttoned pockets and the pointy collar embroidered with red, bucking horses, he looks a tiny bit like a chorus girl from
Annie Get Your Gun
. “Please be there. I don’t like to beg, but please, please, please.”
    “Saturday the thirtieth, ten thirty. I will be there.”
    “You’ll have to behave yourself in school. No more alternative suspensions. Can you keep your antisocial tendencies in check long enough to avoid Snediker for that one week?”
    “Absolutely. I promise.”
    Jesse breaks Wyatt’s gaze briefly to check her watch—3:24. T minus six minutes till Emily.
    “Late for something?” Wyatt asks, mildly suspicious. No gesture of Jesse’s, not even the most discreet watch-check, escapes Wyatt’s attention.
    “No, I just, I really have to get started on this homework. I’m sorry but I told you, I can’t actually hang out today.”
    “Yes, I actually heard you the first six times you said that, and I have to work, too,” says Wyatt, just a bit testily. “I won’t bug you.”
    “What are you working on, a historically accurate diorama of Ayn Rand’s first apartment?”
    “Actually…” Wyatt lets his gaze drift vaguely up to the air above Jesse’s head. “I’m applying to do study abroad next semester, and I have to write an