The Second Life of Abigail Walker Read Online Free Page B

notebook from her backpack.
    â€œYou doing okay?” he asked quietly.
    Abby wished he would just forget about what had happened in class yesterday. She was a different person now. Didn’t he know that?
    â€œI’m fine,” she told him. “Everything’s fine.”
    When Myla and Casey walked into the classroom, Abby smiled at them to see what would happen, and wasn’t surprised when they acted like they hadn’t seen her. She blew into her fist again. She still wasn’t dead.
    Don’t get cute, her father liked to tell her, and Abby heard him say it again as she waved goodbye to Myla and called, “See you later, Casey,” at the end of the period.
    Who was being cute?
    She crammed her books back into her backpack. She had PE next, and it was a dress-out week. She wondered if the bleachers would be pulled out from the wall in the gym. If they were, she might be able to hide underneath them, the linoleum cool beneath her legs. She wouldn’t have to spend the entire period pulling her shirt so it stretched enough to hide the tops of her legs in the stupid gym shorts that made her feel practically naked. Most sixth-grade girls had toothpick legs, skinny bird legs, but not Abby. She had Jell-O knees, marshmallow thighs. It was humiliating.
    A shadow fell across her desk. When Abbylooked up, Anoop Chatterjee was standing in front of her. He was such a skinny, slim-jim kind of kid, she was surprised he cast a shadow at all.
    â€œI am correct that you have B lunch?” he asked, and when she nodded, he said, “Would you care to join me?”
    If Anoop Chatterjee had asked her to marry him, she couldn’t have been any more surprised. “Uh, where do you sit?”
    â€œWith my friend Jafar, near the teachers’ table. But Jafar is not here today, and I would like company.”
    He didn’t appear to be nervous. He didn’t appear to be madly in love with her. He looked at Abby in a calm and measured way, as though he was willing to wait many minutes for her answer.
    â€œSure, okay,” she told him. “That would be nice.”
    He gave a slight nod of his head. “Yes. I believe so.”
    So she could do what she wanted to do, she thought as she trudged along C hallway to PE. Could eat lunch with Anoop Chatterjee. Could say yes. How funny. How strange. She lookedaround her. People banged closed their lockers and yelled across the corridor and shoved into each other and laughed in loud barks. They weren’t paying any attention to her. They weren’t checking out her socks to see if they matched her shirt or whispering about her behind their cupped hands. They had their lives, she had hers.
    That was all she was asking for.

we do not know each other very well,” Anoop said when they’d taken their lunches out and begun to eat. “You may ask me a question about myself if you wish.”
    Abby bit off a piece of her Kit Kat bar, which she was treating as an appetizer. She tried to come up with the most interesting question she could think of. “Are you a Hindu?”
    â€œNo, the people in my family are scientists, not Hindus,” Anoop told her. “My parents are completely rational. They think God is a nice idea, but an unlikely one. My sister goes toCatholic school, though, and she quite enjoys the mandatory services. She says it is very calming when the priest says the Eucharist. But she will not become a Catholic herself. My parents would disown her.”
    â€œDoes she want to become a Catholic?”
    Anoop gave Abby an odd look. “No, of course not. Why would she?”
    She shrugged. “No reason, I guess.” She pointed to what looked like a rolled-up tortilla poking out of his lunch bag. “What’s that?” It felt rude to ask, but she was interested. She was used to medium-girl lunches, containers of pink yogurt, turkey and Swiss cheese sandwiches on honey-wheat bread.