Read Online Watch Over Me by Christa Parrish - Free Book Online Page B

always had a place to go, had people who wanted her—until he considered the price she paid for those perks. She gave herself away to anyone who showed a bit of interest. Not worth it.
    Dirk was cheating on his aunt, again; that was what the crisis had been this morning. Matthew had cooked eggs and toast for his two younger cousins and ate with them until Heather came storming from the back of the apartment, hurling her boyfriend’s clothes out the front door. Dirk followed, grabbing her wild arms. She whacked him across the face with his sneaker; blood spurted from his nose, and Matthew had pulled the girls to a neighbor’s apartment before biking to school to use the computer lab.
    The lights blinked on and off, the ten-minute warning. He slipped on his backpack, passed Skye hunched in a desk cubby, her thick hair veiling her face. He watched as she picked the metal security strip from a magazine, stuck it under the desk. He tugged her sleeve and she jumped.
    “Matty, don’t do that. You scared the stink out of me.”
    Sorry , he wrote. You hiding out?
    “Yeah. You?”
    He nodded. What are you reading?
    “Nothing. The newspaper.” She shuffled the gray pages over the latest issue of Seventeen .
    Want to get some ice cream? My treat.
    “I’m kinda . . . not really eating ice cream right now.”
    You rather go home?
    “Okay, well, maybe a pop. Let me just put this back.”
    She kept the magazine hidden beneath the newspaper and disappeared into the stacks for a minute. When she emerged, he saw the outline of a rectangle beneath her thin yellow T-shirt, the silhouette of a woman, the word Maybelline . He stood too close to her as they left, his stomach nearly against her back, so the librarian wouldn’t see it, too.
    They walked to Phil’s Steak n’ Bake, Skye scuffing her heels through the gravel.
    New shoes? Matthew asked. She wasn’t wearing her usual canvas tennis shoes, the black ones covered in pink hearts and top-hatted skulls. These were light blue with pointed toes and fat white soles.
    “I found them in the back of Ma’s closet. I’m going for the granny look. You like?”
    Crazy.
    “That’s me.”
    The small restaurant, decked out in Old West style, was fairly busy for a Tuesday. Some locals, some travelers who pulled off the highway for food or toilet, and some families from the KOA down the road. They sat, and Skye pulled the magazine from her back. He flipped the page in his pad, but she snatched his pen. “Don’t start.”
    He ordered a sundae, she a Sprite with two scoops of chocolate ice cream floating in it. She drank from three straws and paged through Seventeen . They didn’t talk, weren’t there for talking. Skye tore several uneven circles from the magazine and sucked up the foam at the bottom of her mug. He paid at the register, and someone bumped him.
    “Hey, Matt. Long time no see,” Jared Whalen said.
    Matthew took a pen from beside the credit card machine and scribbled on the napkin, Busy, busy.
    “I hear you,” Jared said, stuck his finger through a hole at the hem of his dingy T-shirt. “Well, I don’t hear you. But I, you know, get you. It. What you said. I mean, wrote.”
    Relax. It’s all good.
    “I know, Matt. Sorry. I think I must be fried from the sun.” He’d rolled the bottom of his shirt into a fat sausage of fabric while he spoke, eyes flickering toward Skye, and then back to his nervous fingers. “Mr. Hoogendoorn hired me on for harvest.”
    You leave for college soon, right?
    “End of August.” The women behind the counter gave Jared two styrofoam containers. “Wouldn’t have made it without you. You know that.”
    Nah. I’m not the only nerd around.
    Matthew had tutored Jared in occupational math and chemistry last year, a favor for Skye. When she’d asked him, he protested a bit, wondering if her boyfriend might do better with a tutor who could actually explain concepts to him verbally. Skye batted away his worries. “He asked if you would do