Tutored by Allison Whittenberg

Author:Allison Whittenberg [Whittenberg, Allison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-375-89577-7
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2010-12-14T05:00:00+00:00

18

“You lied,” he told her as he plopped himself into the chair next to her.

“I did not,” she said, barely looking up from her tutoring log. She penciled in the notation: One student present.

“Nobody hired me.”

She tilted her head to the side. “That doesn’t mean I lied.”

“You said it would be easy.”

“No, I didn’t,” she told him. “Now you’re lying.”

“You don’t know nothing about nothing.”

She grinned. “That shows what you know. That sentence you just used was a double negative, so you essentially said ‘I do know something about something’!”

“Well, you don’t.”

“I was just trying to help you.”

He frowned. “Some help.”

“All right, then, I won’t help. Stay miserable and unemployed and uneducated.”

“I tried—”

“Try harder,” she interrupted. “Did you try the Gallery?”

“The what?”

“That mall that’s downtown by Independence Hall. It has about a hundred stores. Did you try your luck there?”

“I didn’t try it at all.”

“Well,” she said in a leading way.

“Well,” he mimicked her.

“Well,” she continued, not fazed by his taunting. “I suggest you apply there. Try one of the restaurants.”

“Restaurants?”

“I mean, burger joints, pretzel stands, any place where they serve food. You’ll never go hungry if you work at a place that serves food.”

He met her eyes, and his lip curled.

She sneered back at him.

They shared a few more moments of silence.

He hitched his chin at her. “You want to go out?”

“Out?” she asked.

“Yeah, out.”

“Outside?”

“Yeah.”

“You want to go out for coffee again?” she asked.

“No.” He shook his head. “You want to go out for coffee again?”

Wendy’s interior voice always jibed with her exterior one. “No,” she said.

He still stared her down. “Feel like coming over my place?”

“You have a place?”

“The place I’m staying at.”

“What’s there?” she asked.

“Me,” he said, and when that got no reaction from her, he added, “And Malikia.”

Wendy cocked her head to the side and asked, “What’s a Malikia?”

“The little girl I watch.”

“What’s her name again?”

“Malikia,” he repeated.

Wendy had never heard that name before, and she mulled it over in her mind. She wondered if it was culturally based or purely fabricated. Moreover, she considered its derivatives. Could it ever be turned into a nickname? “Hi, Mal” or “Good afternoon, Liki.” She supposed in a pinch it would go something like this: “Hey there, Maliky.”

“You want to see her?” he asked.

Wendy stood up. “I’d love to.”

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