The Girl with the Mermaid Hair Read Online Free

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    “He texted me.”
    Fleur tried to fit the nail back onto her middle finger.
    “Bobo,” Sukie reminded her loudly to get the conversation back on track and attract some admiration from someone somewhere. Moira was jumping around while she tugged at too-small tights in an effort to get them up to her waist. Autumn was reading Death of a Salesman and mouthing the words to her part. Frannie, stretched out on a bench with a pencil balanced across her forehead, removed the pencil and shot her friend Jenna a look that was quite possibly amused.
    “He plays football.” Sukie trumpeted the news again.
    “Who has nail glue?” said Fleur, disappearing into a maze of lockers. Frannie rolled off the bench and pulled her feet up under her just in time not to crack her head on the cement floor. She and Jenna walked away, leaving Sukie alone in her lacy raspberry-colored bra, her best bra for creating breast envy.
    After school, as soon as she rescued her phone from Vickers’s grimy paws, she rushed out of his classroomand checked for messages. There was one. PIZZA. PICK YOU UP AT 5, DADDY .
    Maybe it was a good thing that Bobo hadn’t replied. It was possible he hadn’t seen her WHEN , and therefore her new message could follow right behind it. Although this was unlikely. If he was anything like anyone else, he was punching his phone nonstop, sending messages flying at any opportunity. Still, he was an athlete. He couldn’t text on the field.
    Carefully, slowly, she punched in another message for Bobo. J-U-S-T K-I-D-D-I-N-G . After obsessing for hours, “just kidding” was the best she could come up with. She slumped against the wall, exhausted. I am so uncreative, she thought. I’m practically a blob.
    Afterward, studying in the library, she kept her phone clutched in her hand (risking another confiscation), praying for it to vibrate. “Sure,” she told Mrs. Dintenfass, and when Mrs. Dintenfass said, “I knew you would. I’ll put you down, then,” Sukie had no idea what Mrs. Dintenfass had asked her or what she was being put down for. Normally able to speed-read and retain twenty-five pages in ten minutes—she’d timed it with Mikey on the stopwatch—she found herself spacing out on a paragraph about epiparasites andendoparasites, starting it again and again, retaining nothing.
    Standing outside, waiting for her dad to get her, Sukie double-and triple-checked her phone. Was it working? Her skirt was off-kilter. The back zipper had moved all the way over to the side—it had a tendency to self-shift. Did her way of walking contribute to this? She hadn’t yet figured it out, but usually she kept better track of the problem. Finally she saw the flat top of the Bronco looming. She climbed into the backseat, letting Mikey have the front, a rarity. “Did Mom leave okay?”
    “She forgot her Fiji water. She phoned from the car,” said her dad.
    “What were you supposed to do about that?”
    “Good question.”
    “What about the building?”
    “I’m waiting for them to counter.”
    He launched into the drawbacks of adjustable versus fixed-rate mortgages. Sukie kept her eyes on her phone, hoping that a message would surface. I’ll count to ten and then it will come. Silently counting, she didn’t hear a word her dad said. “You’ve got a good business head,” he told her, pleased to fill the air with his knowledge, getting confused as he often did: Hisdaughter’s listening to his brilliance automatically conferred brilliance on her. Even though she wasn’t listening. She was barely giving the appearance of listening, but how could he know? He was driving and she was sitting behind him.
    When they had parked and Mikey had raced ahead into Clementi’s Pizza Parlor, her dad said, “Good thing your mom isn’t here, she’d be all flipped out about the calories in mozzarella.”
    “Omigod!” Sukie shrieked. “Cheese! I ate cheese!”
    They laughed together, a cozy feeling.
    “Should we tell her we