The Fruit of My Lipstick Read Online Free Page A

and I didn’t like it much.” I didn’t know whether to feel sour about losing Lucas’s friendship over something that just made her laugh, or to be amazed he’d taken me at my word.
    Even if it was the last word he’d let me say to him.
    “What do you mean?” Lissa asked.
    “I called him on it. He said a few other things too—” which I was not going to repeat “—and I told him he owed you an apology.”
    “He apologized to me because you told him to?” Lissa’s eyes rounded. “Wow. You must’ve been scary.”
    “Or he really likes you,” Carly put in. “A guy would never do something like that unless what a girl thought mattered to him.”
    “Trust me, it’s not that,” I said. “He basically told me I couldn’t talk to him like that and to never speak to him again.” My shoulders slumped and I bit into my forkful of mixed greens and cranberries without enthusiasm. What I needed here was comfort food, not rabbit food. A whole panful of my grandmother’s
shui jao
with rice vinegar, to start.
    “But he did it,” Carly said. “And you’ve got to believe it wasn’t easy for him.”
    “Apologizing to Surfing Barbie,” Lissa said, acid tinging the edges of her smile. “That had to be tough.”
    “He doesn’t know you at all, even though he prays with us,” I said. “I told him you were going for the Hearst Prize, but I don’t think he believed me. I feel stupid now for . . .” I stopped.
    “For what?” Carly’s eyes sparkled. “Liking him?”
    “Aha!” Lissa leaned in and pointed her sun-dried tomato panini at me. “I knew something was going on with you two. Why else do I keep seeing you when I walk by the physics lab?”
    “There is nothing going on.” There, that sounded convincing. “Especially now.”
    But I had to wonder.

Chapter 3
    W HEN YOUR EMOTIONS are all stirred up, there’s only one thing to do.
    I found an empty practice room and stretched my hands into the opening chords of Harris’s “Introduction and Fugato.” It wasn’t very challenging—I’d memorized it when I was twelve—but it was emotional, which made it the perfect frustration piece. I pounded out its chords and runs, warming up and zoning out.
    Which is why I freaked out of my skin when I slammed out the finale and someone said my name from the doorway.
    “Lucas!” I clapped a hand to my throat. “You scared me.”
    “Sorry.” He moved a step into the room, which is big enough to let the sound out of the piano, but not big enough to hold more than a couple of people. “I thought you were done.”
    “I was. I just didn’t see you.”
    He smiled. “I could tell. You were pretty focused.”
    Silence fell as I took my foot off the pedal and the final chord died away. Were we talking again? What was he doing here? Should I say something? What?
    He cleared his throat and jammed his hands into his pockets. “You were right.”
    About what? His badmouthing Lissa? Or something else?
    “I shouldn’t have said what I said about your friend. I apologized to her.”
    “She told me. She didn’t know what your reason was, though.”
    “Did you tell her?”
    “Yes. She thought it was funny, you calling her Surfing Barbie.”
    His eyebrows rose above the tortoiseshell frames of his glasses. “Funny?”
    “Yes, Lucas,” I said. “Someone thought your opinion of them was funny. But I appreciate what you did. It took guts.”
    Either there was something really interesting on the carpet, or he couldn’t look me in the eye. “I didn’t want you to be mad at me.”
    This was news. “Oh. That must be why you told me never to speak to you again.”
    “That was stupid, too. I was sorry as soon as I said it.”
    A happy little spiral of warmth started up in my chest. “So we’re cool, then?”
    He nodded, and tried on a tentative smile, as if he didn’t do it much. It changed his whole face—softening its angles and making you realize he had a very nice mouth. Not that I make it a habit to