Read Bumped for Free Online

time during this conversation. My sister takes in Zen’s stricken face, and seems to find courage in it. She continues with a new gleam in her eye.
    “I was, um . . .” She casts a quick glance in the direction of Babiez R U for inspiration. “ Fertilicious , wasn’t I?”
    Again, the word sounds false coming out of her mouth. And yet it still causes Zen to tug on his hairspikes. His obvious distress emboldens my sister even more.
    “Wasn’t I?”
    I don’t agree with what my sister is saying, but I want her to like me. She gives up when I take too long to corroborate.
    “Oh well,” she says with a shrug, “I’m done here. I’m taking the shuttle home.”
    No! This is going all wrong.
    “But what about my veil?” I ask, trying to stay calm.
    “If you need it so badly, why don’t you go back to Goodside and get it?” She hesitates for a moment as if she knows she shouldn’t say what she’s about to say, but decides to say it anyway. “Maybe you should go back to Goodside, where you belong.”
    Where I belong. If she only knew.
    “But . . .” I say, trying not to well up. “I hoped . . .”
    “What? That I would give up everything I’ve got here and go back with you? That I would settle down and get married and make”—she spits out the last word — “ babies ?”
    She’s right. I had hoped—unrealistically so, I now see—that my blood sister would share Ma’s and my house-
sisters’ enthusiasm for marriage and motherhood. But Melody is nothing like the girls in Goodside. No, her reluctance to fulfill her feminine promise makes her so much more like . . .
    Me .
    I gasp at the similarity. “Sister!”
    Melody looks like she’s just been kicked in the chest. Oh my grace, I’ve said it again! She quickly rights herself, and without so much as even a careless farewell to me or Zen, spins around and speeds toward the nearest exit.
    “Later!” Zen calls out, admirably unaffected.
    I’m not ready to leave yet. There’s too much more I need to learn about my sister, and Zen is the person who can teach me. I’m nervous, but the spirit moves me to put my mission before myself.
    “Zen,” I say before my tongue gets stuck. “Would you care to escort me to Plain & Simple?”
    I’ve never been so bold with a boy—not even Ram. Church girls do not initiate. I know it’s an innocent invitation, and yet my face burns hotter than you-know-what.
    Zen rakes his fingers through his hair. “Are you sure your fiancé won’t get jealous?”
    “My fiancé? Oh, no. No! He won’t mind at all!”
    This is true. Ram would never get jealous because such expressions of envy go against our faith.
    “‘Let us behave decently as in the daytime,’” I say out loud. When I notice Zen is clenching his jaw, I keep the rest of the verse to myself.
    “‘Not in sexual immorality,’” I mouth silently, leading Zen down the causeway. “‘Not in debauchery.’”

“SO AFTER DELETING HIMSELF FROM MY LIFE FOR WEEKS, HE totally stalks me at the Mallplex just to let me know that he chauffeured a bunch of Cheerclones to one of their nasty masSEX parties. He’s crazy if he thinks he can make me, like, jealous or something. . . .”
    I’m home now, venting to my friend Shoko on the MiVu. She’s totally couched, crunching her way through a bag of Folato Chips . . . now with 250 percent more folic acid !
    “And then he busts out this bogus contract from when we were, like, twelve that says that if we haven’t bumped anybody by now we’re obligated to bump each other. . . .”
    “Mmmm . . .” Shoko murmurs with her mouth full. Due to drop any day now, she looks like a Eurasian grass snake that swallowed the moon. When she shifts slightly in the pillows—no small task at her size—an invisible woman’s voice bursts into the room.
    “ AZUL . . . BLUE . . . ROJA . . . RED . . . ”
    “Oy!” Shoko lifts up her shirt to reveal the HeadStart belly band straining against her midsection. “Where’s the volume