V I C K I G R A N T
42
looking the way she did. (Byron was the one who had
pissed her off, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t take
it out on me.) I couldn’t go into my bedroom because
it was Byron’s bedroom now, and he wasn’t leaving
the living room. I thought for a minute of going out
and finding Kendall, but I couldn’t do that either.
I mean, I wouldn’t have felt good about leaving Andy
all alone with Stumpy, the One-Armed Nosehole.
So I sat as far away from him as I could on our one
and only couch and tried to watch
tv
.
Just my luck that Byron was feeling chatty. He
looked at me like we were finally getting a chance to
have a little man-to-man talk.
As if either of us qualified.
I ignored him. I just stared at the screen while
he yakked away.
For a guy who thought he was so smooth, he
always managed to say the wrong thing. I was starting
to think it wasn’t an accident.
“What grade are you in?”
I shouldn’t have answered him. I knew I shouldn’t
have answered him.
He went, “Graa-aa-ade eight? I thought you were,
like, eleven!”
Yeah, and I thought you were, like, human, but only
for a minute there
.
