Switched Read Free Page B

saying something about history that I hadn’t even been listening to anyway. “My brother is waiting for me.”

    “Oh, alright, okay.” Patrick nodded and smiled brightly, so I smiled back. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

    I didn’t even know where Matt was and I was already hurrying away from Patrick into the parking lot. Scanning quickly for Matt’s light blue Prius, I absently started to chew my thumb nail. When I looked back at Finn, he and his Cadillac had magically disappeared, and for some reason, that only bothered me more. I was still staring at the empty spot where Finn had been when a loud honk startled me, so I jumped. Matt was sitting a few cars down, looking at me over the top of his sunglasses.

    “Sorry,” I opened the car door and hopped in, but he just stared at me for a moment. “What?”
    14

    “You were biting your nails and looking around. Did something happen?” Matt asked seriously, and I sighed. He took his whole big brother thing way too seriously.

    “No, nothing happened. School sucks,” I brushed him off. “Let’s go home.”

    “Seatbelt,” Matt commanded, and I did as I was told.

    Matt had always been quiet and reserved, thinking everything over carefully before making a decision. I rarely argued with him because there wasn’t a point in it, even though I tended to argue with everyone about everything. He was a stark contrast to me in everyway, except that we were both relatively short. I was barely over 5’4, and he was 5’9. He had sandy blond hair that he always kept short and neat, and his eyes were the same shade of blue as our mother’s. My hair was an unruly dark brown mass of curls, and my eyes matched it perfectly. Since Matt was a pretty intellectual guy, he was shockingly muscular. I think he had some kind sense of duty, like he had to make sure he was strong enough to defend us against anything, so he spent a lot of time working out.

    “How is school going?” Matt asked carefully.

    “Great. Fantastic. Amazing,” I lied.

    “Are you even going to graduate this year?” Matt had long since stopped judging my school record. A large part of him didn’t even care if I graduated high school. In fact, he probably preferred it. The thought of me going off to college had to terrify him.

    “Who knows?” I shrugged and started rummaging through my bag for my iPod.

    “Just to warn you, we got a call today,” Matt said. “About you sleeping in class.”

    “Delightful,” I sighed. Matt could care less about my schooling, but my aunt Maggie was an entirely different story. And since she was my actual legal guardian, her opinion mattered more than I would’ve liked. “What’s her plan?”
    15

    “Maggie’s thinking bedtimes,” Matt informed with a dry smirk. He had been privy to all my failed attempts at bedtimes over the years.

    “I’m almost eighteen!” I groaned. “What is she thinking?”

    “You’ve got four more months until you’re eighteen,” Matt corrected me shortly, and his hand tightened reflexively on the steering wheel. He was suffering from serious delusions that I was going to run away as soon as I turned eighteen, and nothing I could say would convince him otherwise.

    “Yeah, whatever,” I waved it off. “Did you tell her she’s insane?”

    “I figured she’d hear it enough from you,” Matt grinned at me.

    “You told her it wouldn’t work, though? And if she tries to make me go to bed then… I don’t know. I’ll take sleeping pills in the morning so I sleep through all my classes!” I announced triumphantly, as if it were a perfectly brilliant, logical idea. Matt laughed, the same way he laughed at all my ridiculous posturing.

    “I told her it wouldn’t work,” Matt assured me. “But I thought it would be best if you let her tell you the rules, and then you yelled about not obeying them. Then you both agreed to some kind of compromise where you pretty much do whatever you want.”

    “Yeah, that is usually