Frannie in Pieces Read Online Free Page A

apple to me.
    I tossed it in a garbage can that was fortunately nearby.
    â€œWhy did you do that?”
    I slammed my locker shut and split for class. Jenna may know where Waldo is now, but I intended to lose them both.
    â€œYou’re going the wrong way,” Jenna shouted.
    She was right, but I wasn’t turning around, no way. I went up to the second floor, took a detour, and came down to the first floor again. As a result, I was late to history, and when I walked in, Denicia Hays, who had cried when the hamsters died in second grade, clapped as though my return to school was something to applaud and everyone else joined in. Dad was right about Cobweb. I should be in public school.
    I spent lunch in the chemistry lab. It’s always empty during lunch, and if you want privacy, it’s the best place to hang. I could hear girls screaming—not like I screamed when I saw my dad, just random shrieks now and then, like a guy had poppeda girl’s bra strap or put a spider on her neck. Baby stuff.
    It was nice in the chemistry lab. It smelled safe, like disinfectant. I ate my tuna sandwich the way I used to, itty bitty bites of crust first, then the soft part after. I wondered what Saran wrap is made of. I decided to read the small type on the box when I got home.
    Jenna called that afternoon. “Hi, it’s me, where were you?”
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œI texted you maybe fifty times. At lunch? After school?”
    â€œBusy.”
    â€œOh. So…”
    â€œSo.”
    â€œFrannie?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œDo you want to go to the movies on Saturday? There’s a bunch of us going.”
    â€œNot really. But thanks anyway.” I tossed my cellphone into the back of my closet. Dad was right—cells are a pain. Instead of talking, you could be looking. Who knows what you’re missing? Besides, I didn’t need it because there was no one I wanted to talk to.

5
    I develop a routine: arriving at school at the very last second, lunch in the chemistry lab, and then directly home, where I mostly lie on the floor and space out on the light, although a huge evergreen outside the window blocks most of it. When I say I’m spacing out on the light, I’m really lying on my back eating chips. No one bothers me, because my mom works her butt off and The Mel commutes to the State University at New Paltz, an hour away. (Sometimes I call him “The Mel” because it sounds beasty, sometimes simply“Beastoid.” With his hulky bod, bizarre hair wave, many freckles that I think of as spots, he definitely qualifies as part creature.)
    Even at breakfast Mom is rarely present. At about five A.M . she drives to the flower markets in Poughkeepsie to buy what’s fresh. When I was little, I would go with her, and I became expert at predicting which rosebuds would open and which would stay tightly closed until their heads drooped and it was curtains. With roses, the trick isn’t cutting them and plunging them (Mom always says “plunge,” like it’s a submarine, not a stem) into hot water. There’s a second sense about whether a flower will blossom, and if you hang around enough of them, eventually you get the gift. Although once they open, there’s no telling when they’ll die. Sometimes they keep opening bigger and fuller and more and more gloriously. Sometimes a rose looks young and fresh and perky when you go to sleep, and the next morning the blossom flops like its neck’s been broken.
    For two weeks Jenna calls every night. Mom gives me the messages, but I ignore them. Finally I suppose that her mom called my mom, because my mom comes into my room, sits on the edge of my bed while I’m considering whether to sleep, and says, “I hear you’re not seeing Jenna much.”
    I just shrug.
    â€œYou guys have been friends forever, Frannie.”
    â€œThings change.”
    She rubs my foot through the blanket. “Do you want