Soul Catcher Read Online Free Page A

and rolling eyeballs. People laughed at him but it seemed that no one, other than Patrick maybe, really liked him. Eddie had requested Patrick as his roommate and Patrick hadn’t objected, which was as good as announcing they were best friends. It bothered me that Eddie’s bad taste might creep into their private conversations. I trusted Patrick, but he was a boy, and Eddie had a way of bringing out the worst in people. He would nudge and prod until a perfectly nice person would spit out something cruel. Like the time Ted, another Upper Girls dorm parent and generally acknowledged as one of the school’s nice guys, refused to let Eddie sit at his table at dinner because he was a ‘parasite’. But he was Patrick’s friend, so I tried to tolerate him. He often sat with us at meals. He was also taking basketball, which meant I had to put up with him when I went with Patrick to the gym. Luckily, Eddie went down to the gym early every afternoon, and not with us. He had a mission, a stupid Eddie joke. Amy, the fat Be Here Butterfly, had signed up for basketball in her quest to lose weight, and Eddie appointed himself her tormentor. She would dribble the ball around the court for fifteen minutes before activities started, and Eddie would chase her. Sometimes she got so mad, she turnedaround and threw the ball right at his head. He spread a rumor that they had sex in the woods at night.
    I went to the gym with Patrick and watched him take off his clothes. He had his basketball uniform on underneath. His long legs were covered with curly orange hair; hairy legs meant a boy was growing up. But his chest was smooth and his arms were slender and white, except for a recurring rash in the insides of his arms, which he told me came from sweating. He jogged over to Eddie and Amy and hopped and sidestepped and reached until he confused the ball away from them. He jumped up, and snapped the ball into the hoop.
    I ran over to the ceramics shed and could tell by the silence that the period had already started. I crept in and sat down next to Gwen, hoping Louise wouldn’t pay any attention. She was in the middle of demonstrating how to make a tall vase. But when she heard me, she looked up and her creation took a U-turn. The wheel slowed to a stop and she stared at me with squinty eyes. Her long brown hair hung in front of her narrow face. She wore black eyeliner and pink gloss on her lips.
    ‘Hello Kate,’ she said.
    ‘Sorry.’
    She shook her head as if she just didn’t want to hear it. Personally, I think she understood; being in love herself, she knew how hard it could be to tear yourself away. For all the times I was late to ceramics, she never once reported me.
    She tossed the ruined vase into one of the large bins by the wheel and scooped up a fresh lump of wet clay. She kicked and the wheel spun, and as the lump took form, growing narrow, hollow and tall, she doled out directions and advice. The trouble was that Louise didn’t know much more about ceramics than we did. Ten minutes later, she had finished her demonstration and produced a rough, lopsided vase with such a tiny opening it probably would have strangled a flower.
    ‘Now,’ she said, as the wheel spun to a stop, ‘let’s see if you guys can make one like that.’
    There were seven of us and only one wheel. Louise watched over each of us as we took her seat and tried to make a flower killer. One girl actually made a nice vase. A kid from Upper Boys made a bowl that he insisted was for low flower arrangements. Because it was getting late, Louise let it go.
    I took my turn next and made the fastest vase in the east. It came up from the wheel like a time-lapse blade of grass, tall and straight and solid.
    Louise looked at it and said, patiently, ‘It’s supposed to be hollow.’
    ‘But it’s art .’
    She let that one go, too; in three minutes the period was supposed to end, and Jimmy would be waiting for her.
    Troy was last. He was tall and beefy, with a head of