Before, After, and Somebody In Between Read Online Free Page B

concentrate. All I’ve done today is fight, fight, fight. I’m utterly sickof it, and Jerome is right: I’m always running my big mouth, always pissing people off.
    I lock my trunk back up, stash the key, take the screen off the window, and scale the rickety fire escape. Jerome’s sprawled on the bed, his nose buried in Romeo and Juliet, and I can hear Bubby snoring in the crib. That other kid, Mario, is nowhere around.
    I scratch on the screen and whisper, “Hey!”
    “What?” he grumbles without looking up from the book.
    “I take it back, okay? I had a really sucky day.”
    He drops the book into his lap and turns his head to the window. “Yeah. Me, too.”
    “Can I come in?”
    “You wanna get us killed?”
    “I’ll be quiet. I swear.”
    With a dramatic sigh, Jerome crawls across his bed to unhook the screen. I jump over the sill, plop down beside him, and point to the book. “I can’t believe you’re reading this already. We’ve got, like, six weeks.”
    “I don’t like to wait till the last minute.”
    “Duh, I can read it in one night. Are you always such a grind?”
    “You always such a stuck-up bitch?”
    “Are we always gonna end up fighting like this?”
    “Probably,” he admits, but at least now he’s smiling.

6
    While Miss Fuchs races through attendance the next day, Shavonne shoots me a note from three rows away: Come over after school, k? Knowing that today has to be better than yesterday, I send her a thumbs-up. I relax even more when I notice that old Blubber Butt, happily, seems to have lost interest in me. A couple of homeroom homies harass me off and on— Ma-a-artha, yo, Ma-a-artha, hey boo, gimme some sugar, baby! —but at least they’re nice enough to keep their hands to themselves.
    At lunch, Shavonne and I sit with Kenyatta and Monique. Kenyatta’s dark, tiny, and smart, with straight black hair hanging into her eyes. Monique, on the chubby side, even flashier than Shavonne, acts like an airhead, but still, she’s sweet. I’m just glad I don’t have to eat alone in this freaking cafeteria. Food flies through the air, fights break out every minute, and the music’s so loud you have to scream to be heard.
    When they announce over the PA that there’s a music assembly last period for anyone interested in joining the school orchestra, Shavonne slams down a fist. “Alri-i-ight! Let’s bail!”
    I blink. “You mean cut?”
    They break into hysterics, and Kenyatta whaps me on the back. “Girl, you gonna be hangin’ with us, you better get your shit together fast!”
    “My shit is together, and I’m not cutting. Anyway,” I say loudly over their shrieks of laughter, “maybe I want to go to this thing.”
    “Eew, what for? It’s or-ches-tra!” Shavonne taunts.
    “So what? I like classical music. I listen to it all the time.”
    “You?” Shavonne hoots, and adds as I glare at her, “Well, you don’t look the type to me. More like…” She pauses, then lets out a shrill, “Yee- haw !” that makes Kenyatta and Monique laugh even harder.
    “Hey!” I snap, hugely insulted. “For your information, my dad had a violin. He taught me how to play it when I was, like, five, okay? And I was good at it, too.”
    Shavonne smirks. “Heh, this I gotta see.”
    “Well, you can’t. I don’t have it anymore,” I confess.
    “Why not?” Monique asks from behind her compact, dabbing a lung-clogging dose of powder on her greasy nose.
    All three wait expectantly for my answer.
    “My mom burned it,” I finally admit.
    “She burned your violin?” Kenyatta says in disbelief. “Why?”
    “Oh, she was pissed at my dad about something, so she took some of his stuff, threw it in a barrel, poured gasoline all over it, and tossed in a match. She burned the garage down, too,” I add carelessly, wondering, how secretly twisted do I have to be to utter this story? “The fire trucks came and everything.”
    “Wow,” Shavonne says in wonder as they all sort of look at me