Shiny Broken Pieces Read Online Free Page B

and postcards from Paris are already lined up on the bulletin board above the pair of desks. When I look across to the other side, there, entangled on the bare mattress, are Cassie and Henri, sweaty and giggly and flushed like little pink pigs.
    Henri nods, acknowledging my presence, and tries to get back to nuzzling Cassie’s neck. But she shuts him down cold, sitting up straight and readjusting her deep V-neck sweater.
    â€œAbout time you got here,” she says, perfectly content and casual, as if she was expecting me. I was most definitely not expecting her. “Nurse Connie came looking for you. You missed dinner. Apparently she thinks I’m your keeper.” Her voice is as cold as those ice-blue eyes.
    â€œWhat are you doing in here?” I ask.
    â€œI was supposed to have the single, but I gave it up, you know, because of Gigi’s situation. I don’t want to make things harder on the poor girl.” She frowns at me.
    â€œBut—”
    â€œLook, I’m not happy about it either. But it’s not like you’re entitled to a single.” Her words are clipped, sharp, with a hint of a British accent popping up now and again. “Anyway, it’s too late to do anything about now, right, E-Jun?” She stretches out my name like it’s a heavy, foreign thing she has to carry. A burden.
    â€œEveryone calls me June,” I say, which she should know because we’re not strangers.
    â€œCute,” she replies flatly. It makes me feel like I’ve said my American name is Star or Poppy or Rainbow.
    Then she lumbers off my bed, as if it just occurred to her. When she catches me frowning, she shrugs. “He knows I hate messing up my covers.”
    Henri smirks. “Among other things,” he adds, then winks in my direction. Gross. He gives her a deep, grabby good-bye kiss before he slinks off. I shudder at the thought of him. Something about that boy has always been off to me, and I hate the idea of him being here, in my space. Well, our space, I guess.
    I seethe in silence as I start unpacking slowly, mentally willing away Cassie and all her stuff. There’s just so much of it. The closet is two-thirds full already, and she’s got stacks of books—Machiavelli, Marx, and other political things, along with all the major ballet books—lining her shelf. In the corner, a small cube is filled with dance gear—dead toe shoes, leotards, ribbons, warm-ups. My side of the room—what’s left of it—is stark in comparison.
    When Cassie started at the conservatory in tenth grade, she’d take half her ballet classes with us in Level 6 and the other half in Level 7 with the junior girls. No one really knew her. No one really wanted to know a girl who was too good of a dancer. She was Alec’s cousin—my cousin, I realize with a start—and everyone knew that she’d been specifically recruited from the Royal Ballet School. She was that good. But then, after what Bette and the girls did to her—the hair, the shoes, and especially the lift accident with Will—she disappeared. Now here she is, completely invading my space.
    I unpack the box marked “tea” and plug in the electric kettle, filling it with bottled water, hoping it will relax me. I open upmy new glass-lidded tea box—a gift from Jayhe—and pull out a small satchel of chamomile and lavender that he prepped for me. “It’ll help you chill,” he always tells me. As if anything could really help with that tonight.
    â€œCareful with the kettle,” Cassie announces. “Fire hazard and all.”
    â€œI’ve had it for years and nothing so far.”
    I don’t realize I’ve said it aloud until she whips around and comes right up in my face. “I don’t want any attitude from you.” She stares down at me, her skin pulled taut over her skull, like Charlie, our bio class skeleton. I wasn’t exactly nice to her