Alien Me Read Online Free

was quickly wearing off. “Ah, baby, I didn’t—”
    “Mom told me how your blood sugar dropped. At least it wasn’t your heart,” I said, giving him another quick hug before stepping back.
    I looked deeply into his eyes, hiding my terror that he would beat me down with scorn and I would die under the blows of his friends’ derisive laughter. Many emotions flitted over his face, and for a moment I thought Riley had been wrong, or tricked me into this, and that Martin would use this opportunity to tear me up and ruin me forever at Duncan. He seemed to be weighing his options. He opened his mouth and closed it a couple of times. I hoped he was the politician that Riley thought he was. Finally he looked at the faces of his friends, all of whom were watching with bright, expectant eyes.
    “Yeah, baby, I’m fine,” Martin finally said. “Mom made me stay in the house all day and used my grandpa’s test kit to check my blood sugar four times yesterday. I feel like a pin cushion.”
    “It’s over now,” I said softly, and this time my relief was genuine.
    “Not completely.” His eyes narrowed as he pulled me into his chest and held me tightly. “Don’t think I can’t see what you’re doing here,” he whispered in my ear as he leaned over me. “If I’m going to cover you for what you did to me last Saturday, I expect payment.”
    “I didn’t do anything to you,” I said in a murmur.
    “Oh, baby, somehow you sucked the life right out of me. I could feel you drawing it in, and it wasn’t free.”
    Then he released me for a one-armed hug and planted a loud kiss on my temple. He started to say more, but the first of the daily bells sounded a familiar cry that echoed around the courtyard. Many of the students groaned and a few even swore. Suddenly my three friends flowed into Martin’s circle and surrounded me. Probably no other group of girls on this campus would have had the moxie to do that, but today my friends were fearless.
    “Time for Honors English,” Cosette said with a warning look at Martin as she pulled me away.
    Martin held Cosette’s glance, but he didn’t say anything. He had met Cosette last spring, and I had always thought he had a thing for her, not that I could blame him. She spent every summer in France with her grandparents and her voice carried an accent that boys found buttery-soft sexy. Every word she uttered sounded pretty. As we walked away, I was trembling in reaction and grateful to Riley for her advice, and doubly grateful that it seemed to be working.
    Inside the building, everyone seemed to be talking at once and I dared to hope that every conversation wasn’t about me. My knees still quivered from the strain of acting as if nothing was wrong as I followed my three friends though the crush of students. This would be our third year of Honors English with Miss Ridgeway, a teacher that Gail liked to say was so dry and stiff that she was a fire hazard. Students pushed their way through the door in pairs, and by the time I managed to get through the classroom door, there were only two empty seats.
    Miss Ridgeway stood in the front of the room by the whiteboard. Her short upper lip gave her face a perpetual sneer, and her limp hair rested in clumped strands on her bony shoulders. Her earrings, tiny apples dangling on short chains, didn’t move she surveyed her class. Miss Ridgeway walked to the door to close it when a young man rushed in and slid into the last empty seat next to me.
    And I screamed. My black onyx earrings and jade necklace suddenly burned like glowing embers on my skin. I jumped to my feet, clawing at the jewelry, trying to tear the earrings from my ears and the beads from my neck, all the while shrieking in pain. Students seated near me leapt to their feet and jumped back as I fought to get the jewelry off of me, but the jade beads seemed to have been strung on steel. The earrings singed my fingers, and I couldn’t get them unclasped.
    Then the pain stopped as