Read Online Too Cool for This School by Kristen Tracy - Free Book Online

whale thinks that right before it gets harpooned,” Ava snapped.
    “Stop!” Lucia said. “I actually saw a show about whaling ships, and it takes a long time for a harpoon to tire a whale.”
    “Whatever,” Ava said. “Eventually the whale sinks. And Lane shouldn’t be a harpooned whale. She deserves so much more than that.”
    I really agreed with Ava’s position on this.
    “But the whale doesn’t sink,” Lucia said. “It’s cut up into useful parts. For lamp oil and stuff.”
    “That’s an even worse fate than sinking!” Ava said. “Listen, here’s the plan. On Monday, if Angelina shows up at school looking decent and acting normal, we’ll befriend her and do what we can to help her survive. But if she doesn’t listen to us and she shows up refusing to blend, we need to cut her loose and let her swim those waters alone.”
    There was a bunch of silence. I think we were all thinking about the cut-up whale.
    “That’s so harsh,” Rachel said finally. “I feel bad for her.”
    “Her? Feel bad for
us
. We can’t hang out with a weirdo. People will think we’re weird too.”
    “So we’re just going to ditch my cousin?” I asked.
    Ava clicked her tongue. “If you want a happy future that includes Todd Romero, yeah. We ditch her.”
    It took Angelina a long time to come back to the trampoline. And when she did, I tried not to look at her too much. I knew what I had to do. I just hoped I’d be able to do it.

9
    I made my two dozen cookies on Sunday night. I settled on a raw vegan chocolate chip recipe. My mom voiced some concern over the fact that we didn’t have to bake them, but I thought that was a time-saving bonus. With my raw cookies, all I had to do was leave them out and dehydrate them for the night.
    “What are these for, again?” Angelina asked as she watched me scoop the last mound of dough onto a piece of parchment paper.
    “A cookie basket,” I said. Angelina needed to start accepting the fact that I didn’t have to exhaustively answer every single one of her questions.
    “And you’re not concerned that they look a little bit like dog poop?” she asked.
    I stared at my undehydrated cookies. “They tasteawesome,” I said, acting as if her dog poop comparison hadn’t offended me. Because I didn’t think they looked like that at all. I thought they looked vegan-y.
    “Are you going to bed right now?” Angelina asked, trailing behind me to the bathroom.
    It was starting to feel like I had a stalker. “Yeah.”
    “My mom might call me tonight. It depends on what time her ship makes port,” she said. “So I’m going to stay up.”
    “Okay,” I said. I tried to imagine what it would feel like if my mom had boarded a ship and sailed off for a month. But I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. No matter how bad my mom wanted to visit a foreign country or take a vacation, she would never do that.
    I entered my bedroom and noticed that Angelina still hadn’t laid out her outfit for school like I’d suggested. It drove me nuts that I didn’t know what she was going to wear tomorrow. And I couldn’t tell if she was intentionally trying to drive me nuts or if it was an accidental thing. Maybe I should mention that I was willing to help her pick out an outfit one more time?
    Rather than reach out to her, I shut the door instead. It wasn’t my job to dress my cousin.
    “Night!” Angelina called to me. “I’ll make sure nobody eats your cookies.”
    Who did she think was going to eat my cookies? “Okay,” I said. And I pulled out my pink bohemian tunic top and my favorite pair of jeans so they’d be ready for me to wear tomorrow.

    I wasn’t prepared for the drama. Before the sun even made it up, the first day of school with Angelina started with a curveball.
    “Would it be a bad idea for me to wear Ava’s pajamas to school?”
    I almost fell over when Angelina asked me this.
    “Uh, yeah. It would be a terrible idea,” I answered. I was basically all dressed, and had