Read Online Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson - Free Book Online Page B

myself; I can’t act or play soccer, and most of them have better grades than me. But I am the thinnest girl in the room, hands down.
    There is an awkward pause between stories and the room gets too quiet. Someone farts softly. The heat comes on.
    I don’t know how they do it. I don’t know how anybody does it, waking up every morning and eating and moving from the bus to the assembly line, where the teacher-bots inject us with Subject A and Subject B, and passing every test they give us. Our parents provide the list of ingredients and remind us to make healthy choices: one sport, two clubs, one artistic goal, community service, no grades below a B, because really, nobody’s average, not around here. It’s a dance with complicated footwork and a changing tempo.
    I’m the girl who trips on the dance floor and can’t find her way to the exit. All eyes on me.
    Ms. Rostoff looks at her watch. It keeps better time than the clock on the wall. “All right, girls.”
    A drama raises her hand—BMI 20. Maybe 19.5.
    Her sneakers are painted, one with an impossibly small checkerboard of a thousand colors, the other with yellow happy faces alternating with black skulls. “Ms. Rostoff?
    Can we have a moment of silence?”
    Ms. Rostoff calculates. Will our parents scream at the school board if she allows a religious ritual in her office?
    Or will they scream if she denies us our freedom of religious expression?
    “Is everyone interested in that?”
    We nod, the strings attached to our heads twitching.
    “Okay then.” She looks at her watch again. “A moment for Cassie.”
    Drama and soccer bow their heads. I do, too. I am supposed to pray, I think. I can never tell with moments of silence. They’re so . . . silent. Empty.
    Somebody sniffs and pulls a tissue from the box. I peek out through my eyelashes. Mira’s eyes are closed tight and her lips are moving. A girl I’ve never seen before wipes her face with a dirty Kleenex from her pocket.
    A soccer player pulls out her phone to read a text. Ms.
    Rostoff rubs her artificial nails against her thumb, then checks her watch again.
    “Thank you, everyone.”
    She proclaims the rules establishes the parameters of our discussion. We will not talk about how Cassie died, or why, or where, or who in this room could have done something to stop her or at least slow her down. We’re here to celebrate her life.
    thirty-three calls.
    Ms. Rostoff has already arranged for a memorial page in the yearbook, and she wrote an obituary for the school newspaper. The soccer team says they are dedicat-ing the rest of their season to Cassie, both weeks of it.
    The theater girls want to take a moment just before the musical starts, when the houselights go out and the stage is black, to light up a single rose in a vase at the center of the stage while the chorus sings “Amazing Grace,” and then the star of the play will read a poem about the trag-edy of dying too soon.
    The idea gets trimmed down to the rose in the spotlight for a minute and a mention in the play bulletin.
    “What about Lia?” Mira leans forward to see me better. “Do you want to do something special? You guys were best friends.”
    Were.
    “These are all great ideas,” my lips say. “But I think Ms. Rostoff should talk to Cassie’s parents. Get their opinion.”
    Diversion successful. The counselor talks about the family’s loss and how we can support them and how we have to be there for each other and how her door is always open and the tissue boxes always full. Before we leave, the soccer captain reminds the team to wear their uniforms to tonight’s wake. Mira says everyone from the play will go in black.

    I am wearing navy blue tights under a stained pair of baggy jeans, a long underwear shirt, a turtleneck, a hoodie sweatshirt I stole from my father’s closet, and my jacket, with a surprise for Cassie buried deep in the left pocket.
    And mittens. Not what you wear to a wake.
    I tell Jennifer I won’t be home for