My Stupid Girl Read Online Free Page B

fine." Her
head snapped up and I made sure to glare at her but she smiled, ruffled my
hair, and then glared right back. “Oh, are numbers too hard for you, dear? Do
you need me to show you the smile chart?” She started to grab for a laminated
sheet with a row of faces on it, ranging from frowns to smiles. “If you want
you can just point to the face that looks like how ‘fine’ feels to you. We
normally only need to pull this out for small children but if you’re having a
hard time with numbers…” I assessed the situation, especially with the
smile-chart hanging in front of my face, and realized how uninterested I was in
dealing with this person anymore so I just decided to answer.
    "One..." The smile chart whipped
away from my face and went back onto the shelf. Nurse Evil put a big check mark
on her paper and opened the curtain between our beds. I saw Lucy briefly; she
looked like her head was tilted towards us. Eavesdropper. She wasn’t at all
ashamed at being caught. She just looked at me and smiled brightly. The nurse
pulled the curtain closed behind her, shutting Lucy’s bed out like it was the
law and it would protect the two of them from the angry punk kid.
    "How you doing, sweetie?" Nurse
Evil said, all chipper and sweet. I heard the thermometer beep and the
"number" question. She didn’t offer the smile chart.
    "I don’t know. Three maybe? I still
can’t really feel my toes, but that’s not really painful is it? I mean, if you
can’t feel it..." I heard a charming laugh and it pissed me off. As cute
as that little line was, I knew if I had tried it I would have gotten flogged
with an ear thermometer.
    "You let me know if you need anything,
anything at all, okay hun? Just press that little red button and I’ll be right
here in a jiff!"
    "Thank you!” I heard Lucy say, all
sugar and spice. The curtains opened and shut quickly, spewing Nurse
Crankypants back into my side of the room. She looked at me, considering for a
moment.
    "If you need me there is a call button
right next to you."
    She left the room shaking her head like she
was trying to figure something out. Probably how the pair of us made it in here
together. I shook my head, too.
    I looked over at the call button that was
"right next to me.” I hate those buttons. You have to crawl out of the
bed, untangle yourself from the maze of wires, then call a cab to take you over
to the freaking thing so you can call a nurse. It's actually easier to just
walk around looking for a real human being than to press that thing. Then, when
they see you they panic, because instead of a mild beep they can ignore for
five minutes, it's some random patient wandering around the ER with fake socks
and a butt hanging out for everyone to look at. I contemplated getting up to
hit the button a few times, just for kicks.
    Thin fingers interrupted my plan for ER
mayhem. Lucy pulled the curtain open. I peeked at her from the corner of my eye
without moving my head and knew she’d seen me. I closed my eyes and sighed. I
turned my face towards her, hiding my lips behind one of the many hospital
blankets and making sure my hair fell in a solid, impenetrable sheet across my
eye.
    "I feel really bad," she paused
and her big bottom lip went down in a mock frown, "I don't know what your
name is, I can’t remember if you told me or not." Her eyebrows went up as
her eyes opened even wider. She looked like she was confessing some great sin.
    "That’s ok." I shrugged, acting
like it didn’t matter to me that a girl I just saved from a horrific frozen
drowning death, not to mention who'd also been a classmate of mine since first
grade, didn’t know my name. "I'm David." 
    "David!" She squealed. "I
like that name. That was my grandfather’s name!" She looked excitedly at
me, like me and her grandfather were the only two Davids in the world. Can it
be?! Another David?! It’s a miracle!
    "I was named after his wife
actually." She didn't seem bothered by the fact that I