Starry Nights Read Online Free Page A

blah,” Bonheur says and rolls his eyes in some sort of parents-are-so-dull gesture. “So my mom said I should just show you the painting.”
    I follow him to the white door at the end of the hall. He takes a key from his pocket, unlocks the door, turns the brass handle, and gestures to the painting hanging behind an imposing oak desk.
    Forget trapdoors, forget five-legged calves and silvery dust.Photo reproductions don’t do this painting justice. Goose bumps rise on my arms, and my heart beats hard against my skin.
    Her back is mostly to the painter, but she’s twisting around, looking over her shoulder with a fierce stare, a sharp longing in her eyes, all the more unusual because Renoir never let his women look at the viewer. They always cast their eyes down or away. But this girl, her gaze is defiant, and her eyes are etched in pools of radiant blue, the same color as Monet’s morning light. Long blond hair cascades down her back, and one hand is held up, as if she is trying to touch something or someone. She is surrounded on all sides by flowers, trapped almost by irises, in shades of violet, of royal purple, of a plum so dark it’s nearly the color of chocolate.
    A chocolate-plum iris.
    And the girl? She is the most beautiful I have ever seen.
    I turn to Bonheur. “About that invitation. I’ll definitely be at your party.”

Chapter 4
House History
    Simon is obsessed with the history of Paris. But not the stuff we learn in textbooks. He prefers the tidbits he uncovers in rare bookshops and old, dusty libraries. Like how some Parisians turned to their own cats for sustenance during the Franco-Prussian War and found them quite tasty when served with olives and pimentos, or how Napoleon III’s wife was rumored to sprinkle gold dust in her hair every morning.
    But they don’t teach us that sort of history here at Lycée d’Aile. They teach us boring history. And boring literature. And boring math. Because school is dull and dreadful, and truth be told, I can’t tell you much about the approved curriculum, or whether this school will give me wings as the name promises, or even what I need to be studying for our end-of-year exams in a few weeks. My mission when it comes to high school is simple—to get by and get out. I suppose my problem with school is not just that it’sboring. My brain doesn’t seem to want to make the right connections between sophisticated math problems and, say, the proper method of solving them.
    But there’s that little matter of my mother holding my grades over my head, so I do my best to pay attention in literature and history and even in math the next day. The task is complicated when the teacher, Monsieur Douyard, fails to vary the intonation in his voice even once during the lecture on something having to do with negative numbers or negative squares or square numbers. I take notes the entire time, but my numbers seem to resemble the letters
SV
—Suzanne Valadon is on my mind—in an elaborate doodle rather than numerals. Too bad Douyard is calling on me for an answer.
    â€œUm …” I have no idea what the question is. “One?” Every now and then in math you get lucky if you answer
one
or
zero
.
    â€œIf I were asking you to solve an equation, you’d have a chance of being correct. But seeing as I’m asking on which axis on a number plane you’d find this complex number, one is not correct. So, shall we try again?”
    â€œHorizontal?” I say, hoping fifty-fifty luck lands on my side.
    â€œNo. The answer is vertical,” he says with a cruel smirk. The girl in front of me snickers. Irène. She’s always getting perfect grades on everything, and all the teachers love her and fawn all over her and have since the beginning of time. Red rushes to my cheeks. “We do have exams in this class, Monsieur Garnier. And I will expect you to be ready with all aspects of math,