Rogue Read Online Free

more listening to other people talk about me when they think I can’t hear them. I have to make them understand.
    After a deep breath, I step into the kitchen. “I know what’s wrong with me.”
    Dad looks up from the pan of spaghetti sauce. He hasn’t taken off his blue vest from his job at the Tech Town in Manchester. His name tag reads JEREMY T. as if he’s a kid in elementary school, not the guitarist J. T. Thornton of Corazón del Este. Mrs. Mac holds the oven mitts. Cloudy water gushes over the top of the spaghetti pot and sizzles when it hits the stove.
    I try to meet their eyes but end up watching the boiling water retreat to the inside of the pot as soon as Mrs. Mac turns off the gas. “It
is
a type of autism. Asperger’s syndrome,” I say.
    â€œThat’s what I tried to tell you, J.T.” Mrs. Mac slips her hands inside the oven mitts. She carries the pot to the sink and pours water and spaghetti into a colander. “She’s smart as a whip but struggles in social situations.”
    That word again. I’m
struggling.
    Dad runs his fingers through his hair. Around his temples are sprinkles of gray and even more in his trimmed beard. “She spends too much time on the Internet, finding diseases to worry about. I’m almost sorry I got her that computer.”
    Hello. I’m here. Not eavesdropping from the living room.
Heat bubbles inside me. I sink my teeth into my lower lip, to keep from saying something that would get me in trouble. I don’t care about Dad, but I think Mrs. Mac is trying to help me.
    As if my thoughts have supernatural powers, Mrs. Mac hands the colander to Dad and turns to me. “I was packing up this evening and found a book for you, Kiara.” She reaches for a stack of books on the kitchen table, but since she forgot to take off her oven mitts, she knocks them to the floor instead. She shakes her head, the same way she did in her driveway after the accident. “I’m sorry, dear. I’m getting so spacey.”
    â€œMaybe you hurt yourself this afternoon. I can look it up online,” I offer, thinking of the search terms “concussion symptoms.”
    â€œNo, it’s everything. Not just today.”
    In my mind, I change the terms to “chronic disorientation”—some of the words I read last week when I was trying to figure out why Dad made the same thing every night for dinner, if he remembered to cook at all.
    She ducks under the table. Her skirt spreads in a near-perfect circle across the wood plank floor. “Got it.” She stands with the books gathered in her arms and gives me the one on top.
    â€œ
Animals in Translation,
” I read, and then the author’s name. “Temple Grandin.” It’s a grown-up book. A hardcover. The book’s jacket is torn, maybe from falling off the table. Torn covers make me nervous, but I don’t want to seem ungrateful. I try to make the edges stick together by rubbing them over and over with my fingernail. “Thank you, Mrs. Mac.”
    â€œShe reminds me of you. And she has a special talent for understanding animals.”
    The X-Men have special powers, which is sort of like special talents except special powers are superhuman, like Rogue absorbing people’s emotions, Karma making people go where she wants them to go using mental energy, or Wolverine healing tears and wounds. This Temple Grandin doesn’t look like any of the X-Men. In fact, she looks like a grown-up cowboy with her Western shirt and square face. Her name could belong to a man too. I have to read the inside flap to find out she’s a woman.
    â€œThank you,” I say again.
    Over dinner, Dad and Mrs. Mac decide to have her car towed to the junkyard and pay for the Elliotts’ repair herself rather than calling her insurance company. Across the table, I finish the first chapter of the book. I have no special talent at understanding