Ridiculous/Hilarious/Terrible/Cool Read Online Free

understanding within this earthly environment while expanding a knowledge including a varied experience.
    â€œWhat does that mean?” says the girl with the glasses.
    â€œNo clue,” says her friend. “Let’s sign up!”
    Emily Harris, girls’ soccer captain, has goals beyond soccer. She has goals for life. She’s got it planned out. She’s applying early to Yale. She will get in. After Yale she will work as a consultant, then attend business school at the University of Chicago. Then she will run a company.
    â€œI’ve always liked that sort of thing, corporations,” she says, striding through the hallways after lunch. Emily is wearing jeans and a gray sweatshirt with PAYTON on the chest, her hair pulled tight in its ponytail. Eyes steady, she explains, “I just want to make a lot of money.”
    This is not entirely true, as Emily also says that her ultimate goal is power.

    Emily often plays with her words, pausing to gauge their effect on whomever she’s talking with. It’s sometimes a question how seriously to take her, especially when she follows whatever she says with her big goal-scoring grin.
    Emily lives down in Hyde Park, in a red brick house with a tall chimney on a shaded street near the University of Chicago. Her bedroom is filled with soccer trophies and soccer medals. Out her window she has a view of her backyard, which has a pond and a fountain. On her wall is a painting of an evergreen tree in winter, which Emily bought at a local art fair after saving her allowance when she was young.
    Emily’s father is a lawyer, her mother a school principal. Her parents divorced when she was in the sixth grade. They remain friends, and the family often gathers for dinners and soccer games. Emily lives with her mother, but is close with both parents. She’s the oldest of three sisters. Being the oldest has always made her responsible.
    Emily feels responsible for many things in her life. She feels responsible for her studies, for getting straight A’s (almost). She feels responsible for helping friends with their homework (which takes longer than her own homework). She feels responsible for acing her college boards, for writing a smart college application essay (intelligent design: wrong).
    Mostly, Emily feels responsibility to herself. She just has high expectations. But she doesn’t worry much. Emily has little patience for those who worry. Emotions are a sign of weakness, and best kept in check. Emily says her soccer coach at Payton doesn’t like it when girls on the team get weepy. A strong exterior is best.
    There are few cracks in Emily’s exterior. She doesn’t trust people easily, doesn’t let them in. But then, in the smallest of openings, she admits something: She has a crush on a boy. She hasn’t mentioned it to anyone, and hasn’t done anything about it. She changes the subject. Her coach was right. Never show weakness.
    The first brisk day of fall. Fog wreaths the top of the Sears Tower to the south of school. Passing trains on the "L” sound muffled. As students enter the front door many wear sweatshirts.
    Maya Boudreau, the actor with the girl-next-door looks, sits in her English class wearing a long-sleeved Anthropologie shirt and an old pair of jeans. Around her neck is a pastel-flowered scarf. She’s fidgeting as usual.

    The class is reading Huck Finn and discussing race. Ms. Murphy, the teacher, walks around the circle of chairs, trying hard to lure the students into a discussion. Ms. Murphy has a scar above her left eye (courtesy of some sibling roughhousing when she was four). The curve of the scar runs parallel to her eyebrow, giving her face an extra attentiveness. But despite her scar, and her encouragement, the subject of race remains too fraught for the students to say much about, here in Chicago, let alone in America.

    Maya watches Ms. Murphy and her classmates struggle, smoothing her hands as