Free The Poe Estate by Polly Shulman Page B

your imaginaryfriend a ghost?”
    â€œI wouldn’t joke about ghosts if I were you, Cole. You never know who—or what—might be listening. Now, is there something you want?”
    â€œI want to take a nice, scenic bus ride with my lab partner,” he said. “It’s crowded in the back.”
    I started to tell him to go away, but instead I shrugged. It
had
been pretty nice of him to ask me to join his lab group. Even though he probably just did it to make Becky Crandon happy.
    Kitty let me know what she thought of Cole in pungent terms—at least, they would have been pungent if she’d been using actual words. She tugged his T-shirt sideways, twisting it around his torso.
    He squirmed uncomfortably. “Hey, what’s your cell number? I need to be able to reach my lab partner.”
    â€œI don’t have a cell phone.”
    â€œYou’re kidding, right?
Everybody
has a cell phone.”
    â€œEverybody except me.”
    â€œHow come? Are your parents paranoid about Internet stalkers or something?” he asked. “Do they limit your screen time? Is that why you’re always reading?”
    Kitty pushed her face through his and hovered so it looked as though Cole was wearing a scowling Kitty mask. If I hadn’t been worried I would seem like a complete lunatic, it would have made me laugh. “I don’t have a cell phone because my family is poor, okay? We can’t afford it.”
    â€œHow can you be poor? You live in that gigantic mansion.”
    â€œWe live in my
cousin’s
gigantic mansion. Which is kind offalling apart. Otherwise we’d be homeless.” I knew I shouldn’t be saying these things—I could just be handing over ammunition for him and Tyler and those creeps to blast me with. But I told myself that not being able to afford a cell phone was nothing to be ashamed of—jeering at people for not being able to afford a cell phone was.
    Cole took my outburst in stride. “Oh, okay. That makes sense. You know one of the things I really like about you, Spooky?” he said.
    I gave him a “yeah, right” look. Yeah, right, there was even one thing he really liked about me.
    â€œIt’s that you’re so gloriously, magnificently weird.”
    Kitty took a lock of his hair and poked it into his left eyeball. He screwed his eyes shut and shook his head hard.
    â€œMe?
I’m
weird? You’re the one who’s making crazy faces!”
    He pushed his hair out of his face and went on, “Like, my other friends, I always know exactly what they’re going to do next. Don’t get me wrong—they’re great guys—but they’re so predictable. Right now Tyler and Ben are going to get into a big argument about who has a better defense, the Tigers or the Cardinals. Then Garvin is going to make a fart joke and Tyler is going to sit on him, and he’s going to knock Ben’s backpack over and everything’s going to spill out, because Ben never remembers to zip it closed. Am I right or am I right?” He jerked his head toward the back of the bus, where his horrible friends were making a racket.
    â€œWhereas you,” he went on, “are sitting here reading a million-year-old book you stole out of a mummy’s crypt. At least, that’s what it smells like. And it’s not even for school.”
    â€œThat’s why you think I’m weird? Because I like to read?”
    â€œIt’s not so much
that
you like to read as
what
you like to read.”
    â€œUh-huh. I’m going back to my book now. I’m at an exciting part,” I said. “The heroine is telling the villain exactly what she thinks of him.”
    â€œRead away,” he said. “I’ll just sit here.”
    And he did, only squirming a bit, and cursing softly when Kitty pinched the cap off his pen, stabbed him with the point, and made ink leak all over his pants.

CHAPTER TEN
    Learning to