The Female of the Species Read Online Free Page B

make us stop talking about it. So instead of discussing Crime and Punishment —which Alex is calmly sitting in her seat reading—we’re talking about the fact that Park was dick-punched.
    The guys are laughing their asses off. They keep reenacting it and attempting to fist-bump Alex, but she couldn’t be less interested. The girls are split into two camps: the ones who have on very straight faces and keep saying that Park could be seriously injured , and those who find it genuinely amusing every time one of the boys involved in the instant replay pretends to reinflate their balls by blowing on their thumbs.
    I’m part of this last group.
    Branley, who everyone knows is a Friend to All Penises, isn’t making much of an effort to control her volume, and her natural soprano is grating on my nerves.
    â€œWhat if he can’t have kids now?” she asks, a perfect little pout following up her intense concern for Park’s man parts. “That’s just crazy .” More emphasis than necessary is put on this last word, and she glances at Alex as she says it, who turns a page of Dostoyevsky.
    A little burn of resentment starts down in my bellyand I try to quash it, fast. I don’t know if it’s because Alex and I have established a kind of companionable silence after incinerating three dead puppies, or if it has more to do with the fact that Branley now traipses around holding Adam’s hand.
    But I really want her to shut up.
    Seeing the two of them together hasn’t been easy. I finally answered a call from DickFace (he’s been renamed in my phone, all heart emoticons removed) about a week ago. I guess it was our official breakup, even though he’d been sharing one chair with Branley at lunch ever since Sara sent me that screencap.
    â€œBabe,” he’d explained, unable to drop the endearment even as he dumped me, “it’s Branley Jacobs . I have a shot at Branley Jacobs . I can’t pass that up.”
    I guess he expected some sort of congratulations from me as he climbed the social ladder, stepping on the skull of the preacher’s kid so that he could jam his face up the skirt of the blond cheerleader. And he seems pretty happy. So, whatever. Fuck him.
    â€œFuck her,” Sara says as she flops into the chair next to mine.
    â€œRight?” I agree, but can’t stop my eyes from going back to Branley as she keeps using words like vicious and dangerous .
    Branley is kind of perfect. One of those girls who wear matte foundation and always look like a porcelaindoll, except I think if you spread a doll’s legs as far as hers go, they would break. I can say this with some accuracy because of the pics she sent my boyfriend.
    Ex-boyfriend.
    I concentrate on that ( ex-boyfriend ex-boyfriend ex-boyfriend ) and flip open my own copy of Crime and Punishment as I try to distract myself from a visual I accidentally created. A picture of Branley’s perfectly molded, heart-shaped face, breaking into shards under my fist. I clench my fists and my teeth, warping a classic paperback and shredding my own enamel at the same time.
    Miss Hendricks finally gets everyone in their seats and Branley passes my desk, leaving the scent of strawberry-vanilla shampoo in her wake. She tosses her phone into her open backpack on the floor, and I can’t help but glance at it.
    I expected to see a selfie background, something coyly posed and angled for maximum cheekbone effect, probably shot from above to make sure the cleavage gets its due. Instead it’s her little sister holding a vanilla ice-cream cone while a clearly well-trained Saint Bernard stares longingly, dual slobber chains caught in midwobble.
    Nice. I want to punch a Saint Bernard owner, the most patient people on earth.
    Good job being the preacher’s kid, Peekay. Good fucking job.

8. ALEX
    We use objects to navigate spaces, making a map in our heads as neurons fire, pathways so well-worn we