Between Read Free Page B

with Alex. It’s as though I’m afraid my friends will look over at any moment and see me with him, and immediately brand me as an outcast. My God—what would Josie say?
    Why do I feel like this? And what kind of a person was I, anyway? I know that I was popular, but it’s so odd—I don’t remember exactly why, or what I was like in my everyday life. And all of a sudden, there’s a part of me that really, really doesn’t want to know.
    Alex stares at us. “I know we can’t be older than that, because I’m still alive.” He nudges me. “Here I come.”
    I watch as he walks into the room alone. He’s carrying his lunch in a plain brown paper bag.
    “Why didn’t you just buy your lunch?” I ask. “Nobody brown-bags it in high school.”
    He gives me an exasperated look.
    “What?” I ask. It seems like a perfectly legitimate question to me.
    “It’s four dollars a day to eat lunch at school,” he says. “We didn’t have the money.”
    I gape at him. “You didn’t have four dollars a day?”
    “No. My parents were strict. They were really tight with money. If I wanted to spend something—even to buy lunch at school—I had to earn it myself. The Mystic Market, where I used to work, paid minimum wage.” He shakes his head. He almost seems to pity me. “You don’t know how good you had it. Not everyone just gets whatever they want handed to them. And besides, I wasn’t the only one who brought his lunch.” He points. “Look.”
    We follow Alex across the room, to an empty table not far from me and my friends. At another table nearby, also sitting alone, is Frank Wainscott. Frank is a year older than we are, which would put him in eleventh grade here. He has bright red hair and freckles. He wears a blue T-shirt and ill-fitting jeans that are too short for his legs. And he is, I remember, a major dork. Like Alex, Frank has brought his own lunch. But on the outside of his brown bag, somebody—presumably his mother—has written his name in black marker and drawn a heart around it. I almost cringe with embarrassment for him.
    As Frank unpacks his lunch, Alex and I start to eavesdrop on my friends.
    Caroline is gazing longingly at a shiny red apple, passing it back and forth between her hands. “I’ve already eaten six hundred calories today,” she says. “How many calories are in an apple?”
    “Eighty,” I say to myself. How do I know that ?
    “Eighty,” my living self informs her. “But apples are good, Caroline. They have fiber and nutrients. Go ahead. Eat it.”
    She gazes at my willowy body, visibly very thin even though I’m sitting down. I’m wearing a sleeveless shirt, my arms skinny and muscular. “You don’t have to worry about getting fat, Liz. You’ve got good genes.”
    Josie snatches the apple from Caroline’s hands. “I thought you were trying to stick with twelve hundred calories a day. If you eat this, that’s almost seven hundred calories right there. And you know you’ll be starving after cheerleading practice.”
    Caroline frowns. “I’ll eat a light dinner.”
    “The last time I ate dinner at your house,” Josie reminds her, “your mom made homemade pizzas. On white bread.” She pauses for emphasis. “With full-fat cheese.” Josie takes a big bite from the apple herself. “I’m doing you a favor,” she tells a forlorn Caroline, talking with her mouth full. “Trust me, you’ll thank me later.” Josie looks around. “Think they’ve got peanut butter up there? I love apples with peanut butter.”
    “You,” I inform my stepsister, “are going to get chunky if you don’t watch it. Peanut butter has two hundred calories for every two tablespoons, and it’s all fat.”
    Josie stops midchew, staring at me. “You heard what Caroline said. We’ve got good genetics.”
    I don’t respond. I just kind of glower at her, silent. The rest of the table falls into a momentary hush, the awkwardness almost palpable.
    “I thought she was your stepsister,”