The Whole Story of Half a Girl by Veera Hiranandani

Author:Veera Hiranandani
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780375984419
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2012-01-10T10:00:00+00:00

chapter sixteen

The next day I wear the sweater, shoes, and lipstick to school and Kate’s mom gives us both lunch money. All day I get compliments on my shoes. Even Alisha says she likes them while we’re waiting after school for the bus, and she’s not the type to care about shoes. Alisha always wears the same thing to school—jeans, sneakers, and a black or gray T-shirt.

Then she says, “You’re starting to look like her,” and frowns a little.

“Is that bad?” I laugh, because I couldn’t look like Kate in a million years, no matter what I wore.

“It depends,” she says in her matter-of-fact way.

“On what?” I start biting away on my thumbnail.

“On what you want to look like. You looked fine to me before,” she says, and shrugs. Things have been weird with me and Alisha. She hasn’t mentioned coming over to her house again and I haven’t either. Maybe I just want to concentrate on Kate and cheerleading right now. Maybe that’s enough.

Then Alisha reaches in her jeans pocket and fishes out a shiny green rock.

“Look, it’s jade,” she says. “Same color as your shoes.” She gives it to me. I turn the rock around in my hand. It’s cool and smooth. It makes me feel good just holding it. When her bus comes I close my hand tight around the rock.

“Can I have it back?” she asks, and holds out her hand.

“Yeah,” I say, but I don’t want to let it go. She wiggles her fingers and I finally press it into her palm. My hand looks so light next to hers I almost don’t recognize myself.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Kate and Jess walk past us to Kate’s bus. Jess is talking fast and loud about something and doesn’t see us. At first I think they’re going to walk by without even saying hi, but then Kate looks up and gives me a low little wave, as if she doesn’t want Jess to see. I wave back the same way and think about what we would all look like standing together, Alisha on one side, Kate on the other, me in the middle. Like a pen running out of ink.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.