Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can't Have Read Online Free Page A

got all the time in the world. She shifts her attention back to the girl I can’t see.
    “Would you care to elaborate, Ms….?”
    “April,” the girl says. “April Park.”
    My heart drops about forty-seven feet and bounces up into my chest. I’m not sure I believe in God, but moments like this get you thinking, you know?
    I get a sharp elbow in the ribs. Eytan is staring at me. “April?” he mouths silently.
    Crap. I shouldn’t have opened my mouth earlier.
    Ms. Hartwell says, “What do you think, Ms. Park? Is that a correct definition of history?”
    April bites at her lip for a second, thinking hard. She’s wearing a pink Izod that reveals a little V of honey-almond skin below her neck. I happen to like honey and almonds. Especially when they’re together. She has on those samegenius glasses, only now that we’re in AP History, they don’t seem so out of place.
    “I don’t think that’s an accurate definition,” April says. “It reminds me of when we learned about World War Two in my old school.”
    “What about World War Two?” Justin says with a sneer.
    “How did it end?” April says.
    “Duh,” Justin says. “We won.”
    “We kicked ass!” Eric says, and the class laughs.
    “But the Japanese don’t think so,” April says. “They think they were on their way to a compromise surrender, and we committed a crime by dropping the bombs.”
    “Why would we do that?” this Goth girl says.
    “The Japanese say we’re too arrogant to compromise,” April says.
    “Ah, yes. History repeats itself,” Eytan whispers to me.
    Justin rolls his eyes like April’s an idiot. “That’s not the real story,” he says. “That’s Japanese revisionism.”
    “First of all, I’m not Japanese,” April says. “I’m giving an alternate view.”
    “Ladies and gentlemen, we have entered the spin zone,” Eric says.
    I can see April’s pissed.
    “It’s like my parents,” I say all of a sudden.
    The attention shifts in my direction. I feel sweat break out under my arms. I glance at April. She looks surprised.
    Ms. Hartwell says, “Yes. Mr….?”
    “Zansky.”
    “Tell us, Mr. Zansky.”
    Eytan looks at me like I’m nuts. The seniors lick their lips.
    “I went to Hyannis Port with my family a few summers ago,” I say. “We were walking through town, and my sister got lost. She was, like, seven, and she wandered away from us in the crowd.”
    Eric makes a loud yawning sound. I want to crawl into a hole and die, but I can’t give up so easily with April listening.
    “Right away my folks started blaming each other,” I say. “Mom said it’s Dad’s fault Jessica got lost because he wasn’t paying attention. Dad said it’s Mom’s fault because she was supposed to hold her hand. But probably it was nobody’s fault. I mean, Jess is a kid and she got distracted, right? But they were so freaked out they just yelled at each other and bolted in different directions. So I stopped and I tried to think like Jess. Where would she go? What does she like? And I looked behind us and I saw these shirts hanging in a doorway that have all kinds of animals on them, like cutesy Asian stuff.”
    I shouldn’t have said “cutesy Asian stuff.” Maybe that’s an insult to April. Maybe now she thinks I’m a jerk. I glance at Nancy Yee for a status check, but she’s sketching in a little book.
    “What happened then?” Ms. Hartwell says.
    “I pulled my parents into the store, and we found Jessica.”
    “News flash. You’re from a dysfunctional family,” the Goth girl says.
    Half the class cracks up.
    “What’s your point?” Justin says.
    I don’t know what my point is. I don’t know why I told this story. I glance at the clock, hoping lunch is coming soon.
    “Well?” April says. She sounds kind of snooty, and I hate her for it.
    I take a deep breath. Focus.
    “I guess my point is that Jessica got lost, and right away my parents started making up stories about it. Nobody bothered to find out what