Waiting for Christopher Read Online Free Page A

cafeteria, and they walked home with the smart nerds after school. “It’s a caste system,” Denise told her. “And we’re one step below the sacred cows.”
    But it wasn’t like that here, where four separate districts fed into the same city-size high school. Feena felt a glorious, free-floating anonymity, lost among new jeans, old jeans, torn jeans. There were whites and blacks and Hispanics; preppies with collared shirts and razor-sharp parts in their hair; slow-eyed stoners, dressed in black; skinny kids with arms and legs that had outgrown the rest of them; heavy kids who shuffled down the halls without looking up; freaks and honeys, jocks and brains; and a few fine fools who didn’t fit anywhere, who made their own rules.
    Like Raylene Watson. Feena noticed her from the first day, envied the way the girl’s calm fortified and protected her, the way she moved like an African goddess through the changing, mottled crew in the cafeteria. Without trying or caring, Raylene was a force to be reckoned with. She spoke sparingly in class, but with a tongue of fire in the halls. She stood outside the school doors before opening bell with her friends—a few white, most black—and studied strangers with heavy-lidded, disdainful eyes. She was, Feena observed from the sidelines, one of the most popular girls in school.
    Which meant, of course, that Feena would have little to do with her. Feena already knew that. Although this school was bigger, more forgiving than her old one, it would require a miracle on the order of a Cinderella makeover to beam her into the privileged realm where people called you Girlfriend, sought out your opinion, copied what you wore. In fact, despite the few glimpses she had of Raylene, the otherness of her confidence, her laughter, Feena accepted her own bit part and never so much as wished for a starring role.
    For several weeks, she made her quiet way to and from classes, began to relax, to feel easy, if somewhat lonely, at her new school. She made several friends—a shy girl from History 1 who dotted every
i
in her notes with a heart, and a funny girl with glasses and a thick accent Feena couldn’t place—people to sit beside in the cafeteria, to pair up with in gym. All in all, she counted herself fortunate. Until the day she discovered Raylene’s secret.
    “Can’t you chill your sorry butts one second?” Raylene was juggling books, talking over her shoulder to two girls as she headed toward her locker. “Mr. Norman and his quadratic equations can wait on us.” Feena, late for her own class, was pinned to the wall as Raylene rushed by. How she admired the sophisticated, bitchy sound of the girl’s words. And the lazy Southern drawl that went with them.
    “What’s a square root ever done for you, anyhow?” Still, Raylene seemed to be in a hurry, jamming everything into the locker at once—backpack, books, papers, purse, Walkman. Of course, it didn’t work, and before she could slam the door shut, most of her things clattered to the floor, bouncing and rolling toward Feena, whose sneaker toe broke the Walkman’s fall.
    Acting on instinct, treating Raylene as if she were nobody special, anybody at all, Feena stooped down to help. “Here,” she said, handing back a spiral and an Earth Sciences text. That was when she saw it, a small book that had slipped out from the stack, a book with a familiar title:
Jane Eyre
.
    “Have you read this?” Feena couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice, heard too late how condescending the question sounded. “I mean, this is one of my favorites.”
    For a brief second, their eyes locked. Feena saw the mild startle, the caution of an animal that’s smelled or seen something in the distance, on Raylene’s normally implacable face. “No.” Raylene grabbed the book from Feena, scraping the rest of her books and pens and pencils out of reach, away from the help she clearly didn’t want.
    “No?” Feena looked away, puzzled,