Free An Off Year by Claire Zulkey Page B

positive. (Actually, I knew it was Angie, but I kept pretending that I forgot it whenever I talked about her to Dad or Germaine. Neither of them found this amusing.)
    Josh and I had never really hung out, just the two of us, outside the house. In fact, he’d sort of ignored me at the beginning of high school, which was devastating at the time. He apologized later, saying that he was just trying to fit in with his friends, but it took me a while to get over the first few days of school, yelling “Hey, J-baby!” (Mom’s nickname for him) in the hall only to have him walk by and not even look at me.
    But we have gotten along fine ever since. I wasn’t sure how Josh ended up seeming so much more easygoing than Germaine and me. Who knows, maybe he was full of secret turmoil and he just managed to act like nothing bothered him too much. But he didn’t seem to get irritated by Dad the way Germaine always did, and when I heard him on the phone with Mom, he didn’t seem to hate talking to her the way I did.
    So I wasn’t sure what it was that I distrusted so much about this girlfriend, but I knew that Josh had been a little annoying since he’d gotten home for break, squirreling away in his room and talking on the phone and making stupid giggly noises, so I had to assume she was the cause of it all. Plus, Yolanda had to come an extra day during the week to clean for the houseguest, which put me in a bad mood because whenever Yolanda cleaned, she moved my stuff from where my stuff needed to be. I had very specific piles around my room that meant certain things. These I would file at a later time. These would get thrown away on Tuesday. This one would just stay around for a while. She consolidated them all, and it drove me wild.
    I knew that Angie was coming the day before New Year’s Eve, so to avoid the grand entrance, I hid in our local Barnes & Noble, which was a bad plan since the store was full of kids off from school and people returning gifts. I bought a celebrity trash magazine and sat in the corner of the café with my back to the room, so if anybody from my school came in, they wouldn’t see me. Eventually I finished the magazine, and I felt that if I ordered another hot chocolate, my teeth would fall out of my head, so I headed home.
    I just had to stay out of the common areas of the house where Josh and Angie might be hanging out. I didn’t want to know what they were doing, but I imagined they were staring at each other and sighing in adoration.
    When I came home, Dad was in the kitchen, paying some bills.
    â€œAngie’s here,” he said, smiling.
    â€œOh yeah? What’s she like?”
    â€œShe seems really cool.”
    â€œCool?”
    â€œShe definitely doesn’t seem like she’s in a bad mood, unlike you. I might trade her for you.”
    â€œLook, I can’t promise I’ll be in a good mood, but what if I just keep my bad mood away from them?”
    â€œThat’s fine,” he said. “Just be polite. Are you jealous or something?”
    â€œNo,” I said. “I just don’t like people in my personal space.”
    â€œI guess it’s a bad idea that I told her she could sleep in your bed,” he said.
    â€œHa-ha.” I went upstairs to brush the chocolate taste out of my mouth. When I stepped out of the bathroom I saw my brother smooching somebody blond and petite in the hallway. I figured that people who make out prefer to do it on couches or beds or in bars, but anywhere seemed to do in the case of these two perverts.
    â€œHi.” I tried to sound like this was all perfectly normal, that I was cool with running into weird makeout sessions. Even Germaine had the decency to close the door when she and Conrad did the disgusting things they did. My brother blushed, but the blond person looked up and smiled.
    â€œCecily, right? I’m Angie! It’s so nice to meet you.” She marched toward me with