Lemon Read Online Free Page A

doesn’t get her down because she thinks she can do something about it. She’s a member of every human rights and environmental protection organization going. She reads up on all the shit that goes down. She seems to think reading is taking action. She drives a low-emissions car and has solar panels attached to her roof. She thinks she’s making a difference whereas I know IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE. Although, since the stabbing, the mail’s been piling up. She doesn’t read the ‘Save Our Water’ pamphlets anymore. Mostly she chases the cats in the backyard. She pitches plastic containers of water at them but always misses. She says the fucking cats shit and piss and dig around in the flower beds. This is not news to me, but Drew used to have a day job and no time to sit around staring at the yard. The cats aren’t afraid of her. She’s collected gravel from the driveway and is planning to ambush them. At least it’ll get her out.
    Doyle’s standing over me wearing his Dairy Dream hat at a jaunty angle. The hats are mandatory; we all look demented in them. The main reason I went out with Doyle is he’s six foot four. I felt like a little woman beside him, wanted him to pick me up the way Rhett picks up Scarlett.
    â€˜Are you washing the scoops regularly?’ Doyle demands. Ever since I stopped going out with him, he demands things.
    â€˜How regularly?’
    â€˜You’re not cleaning them at all, are you? You’re just soaking them.’
    Doyle likes to make explosions in chemistry. Mr. Conkwright will stress that certain chemicals should not be mixed because they’re combustible and sure enough old Doyle will mix them to make a bang.
    â€˜I don’t want to have to report you,’ he says.
    I could say, ‘To who?’ Mr. Buzny, who shows up to collect the cash, who wouldn’t notice a dirty scoop if it was shoved up his ass. I don’t say this because that would be reacting. Doyle wants me to react. Doyle has spread word that I’m frigid.
    â€˜Have you checked the toppings?’ he demands, flipping the lids. ‘You’re almost out of sprinkles here. What the fuck have you been doing?’
    Is it always going to be like this when I tell a boy I don’t want him slobbering all over me? I didn’t actually say that, of course. I think I said I wasn’t ready for ‘this,’ which I’m sure our hero took to mean sexual intercourse in general as opposed to sexual intercourse with him . At our hero’s urging, we’d been imbibing banana daiquiris at a bar with a tropical theme and, I have to admit, those drinks were good. Those drinks even made Doyle look good, until his tongue started weaseling around my mouth. He shoved me up against a fake palm tree beside the toilets. Men walked by zipping their flies. Women flicked their hair. Nobody cared that some guy twice my size was squashing me into a plastic palm. They assumed I was enjoying it, which is what I’d always assumed when I saw couples pushed up against immobile objects. Now I know better. You get yourself into these situations and sometimes it’s not so easy to get out of them.
    Drew’s always told me that if you get into a difficult situation with a boy, tell him you’re going to puke. It worked with Doyle. He backed off and I dashed to the Ladies’ to scrub his spit out of my mouth. Drew knows a thing or two. She’s alright. Which is why I’m sad she got knifed. I’ve never told her that. Maybe I should.

4
    M r. Huff, who’s about a hundred, has us studying A Midsummer Night’s Dream , which has to be Shakespeare’s all-time most boring play - all those halfwit lovers and fairies flitting around. Mr. Huff squints at us. ‘Who’s going to read?’ he asks. I know he’s about to pick me because I’m the only girl whose name he remembers. He only remembers it because I was in his class last