Tell Me Three Things Read Free

heart failure. I knew the signs. I had seen the commercials. All eyes were on me, including those of Caleb and Liam, both of whom were looking with amusement and suspicion. Or maybe it was curiosity. I couldn’t tell.
    “Um, hi, I’m Jessie. I’m new here. I didn’t do anything exciting this summer. I mean, I…I moved here from Chicago, but until then, I worked, um, at, you know, the Smoothie King at the mall.” No one was rude enough to laugh outright, but this time I could easily read their looks. Straight-up pity. They had built schools and traveled to foreign locales, interned at billion-dollar corporations.
    I had spent my two months off blending high-fructose corn syrup.
    In retrospect, I realize I should have lied and said I helped paraplegic orphans in Madagascar. No one would have batted an eye.
    Or clapped, for that matter.
    “Wait. I don’t have you on my list,” Mr. Shackleman said. “Are you a senior?”
    “Um, no,” I said, feeling a bead of sweat release and streak the side of my face. Quick calculation: would wiping it bring more or less attention to the fact that I was excreting a massive quantity of water from my pores? I wiped.
    “Wrong class,” he said. “I don’t look like Mrs. Murray, do I?” There were outright laughs now at a joke that was marginally funny, at best. And twenty-five faces turned toward me again, sizing me up. I mean that literally: some of them seemed to be evaluating my size. “You’re inside.”
    Mr. Shackleman pointed to the main building, so I had to get up and walk away while the entire class, including the teacher, including fantasy-worthy Caleb and Liam, watched me and my behind go. And only later, when I got to my actual homeroom and had to stand up and do the whole summer vacation thing all over again in front of another twenty-five kids—and utter the words “Smoothie King” for the second time to an equally appalled audience—did I realize I had a large clump of grass stuck to my ass.
    On reflection, the number of people who may have sensed my desperation? At least fifty, and I’m estimating on the low side just to make myself feel better.
    The truth is SN could be anyone.
    Now, a whole fourteen days later, I stand here in the cafeteria with my stupid brown sandwich bag and look around at this new terrain—where everything is all shiny and
expensive
(the kids here drive actual BMWs, not old Ford Focuses with eBay-purchased BMW symbols glued on)—and I still don’t know where to go. I’m facing the problem encountered by every new kid ever: I have no one to sit with.
    No chance of my joining Theo, my new stepbrother, who, the one time I said “hey” in the hall, blanked me with such intensity that I’ve given up even looking in his direction. He always seems to hang around with a girl named Ashby (yep, that’s really her name), who looks like a supermodel mid-runway—all dramatic gothy makeup, uncomfortable-looking designer clothes, blank wide features, pink spiked hair. I’m getting the sense that Theo is one of the more popular kids at this school—he fist-bumps his way down the hall—which is weird, because he’s the type of guy people would have teased in Chicago. Not because he’s gay—my classmates at FDR were not homophobic, at least not overtly—but because he’s flamboyant. A little much about muchness. Everything Theo does is theatrical, except when it comes to me, of course.
    Last night, I ran into him before bed and he was actually wearing a silk smoking jacket, like a model in a cologne ad. True, my cheeks were smeared with zit cream and I reeked of tea tree oil, looking like my own ridiculous parody of a pimply teenager. Still, I had the decency to pretend that it wasn’t strange that our lives had suddenly, and without our consent, become commingled. I said my friendliest goodnight, since I can’t see the point of being rude. It’s not like that’s going to unmarry our parents. But Theo just gave me an elaborate and