Playing With Matches , livre ebook

Ecw Press - Suri Rosen

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

93 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

When 16-year-old Raina Resnick is expelled from her Manhattan private school, she's sent to live with her strict aunt. Her sister, Leah, blames her for her broken engagement, and Raina is also a social pariah at her new school. However, in her tight-knit Jewish community, Raina finds she is good at one thing: matchmaking! As she continues to act as a cross between Jane Austen's Emma, Dear Abby and Yenta - the matchmaker from Fiddler on the Roof - Raina's double life soon has her falling asleep in class.

Sujets

Children's

Informations

Publié par	Ecw Press
Date de parution	16 octobre 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781770905931
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

playing
with
matches
Suri Rosen
ecw press

For the Wineberg sisters
Fay and Molly

chapter 1
Hope and Inspiration for the Single Soul

Here’s some advice if you plan on taking the Number 7 down Bathurst Street at 7:36 a.m. Do not sit downwind from the woman eating the industrial-grade tuna fish. And if The Groomer is on the bus, get ready to duck at the first sign of the nail clippers.
You really don’t want any more details. And neither did I. But by my third morning in Toronto, I could have taught a class in Number 7 Studies. Which is what happens when you vacuum-pack the population of Giants Stadium into a space the size of a hot tub. I grasped a slimy pole next to the bus driver (nametag: Ian), where the air was only slightly less gloopy. I was just learning about Ian’s path to driver-dom when he broke the unfortunate news.
“You’ll have to move to the back now.”
Ian was the closest thing that I had to a friend in Toronto.
O Leah, where art thou?
I glanced down at my cell phone but there was still no word from my sister. She was probably just boarding the bus in New York’s Port Authority with her wedding gown wrapped in layers of tissue paper and nestled safely in the garment box. I had sixteen hours until I could meet the gown in person.
I took a deep breath and squeezed myself through the maze of human heat machines to the rear of the bus. Craning my neck, I caught sight of the ginger-haired woman reading in a seat next to the sealed window. Two boys clinging to an overhead pole ogled her from above.
Her red hair was swept back in a half-bun today. Tiny ringlets spilled onto her shoulders. She wore a silky Marc Jacobs blouse that I recognized from Macy’s, a dark twill skirt that covered her knees, and pantyhose.
The elderly man sitting next to her struggled to his feet and pushed his way toward the exit. I squeezed past a child barking into a cell phone and plopped into the empty seat beside the woman.
Gingie-Locks’s eyes were trained on the book resting in her lap. I glanced over her shoulder and noticed the word “love” sprinkled across the page. The title was written in a tiny font at the top of the open book. I leaned over and pretended to adjust the bow on my right shoe so I could make out the name of the book. Hope and Inspiration for the Single Soul.
I could use a little of that myself these days. I leaned back and peered past her, out the window . How on earth was I going to survive this exile?
The bouncing rhythm of “Sweet Caroline” hummed inside my handbag, offering a fleeting sense of the Red Sox. Unfortunately I wasn’t at Fenway Park in the middle of the eighth inning — I was on the Number 7 bus holding a new phone. And since only three people had the number and my parents had called last night, there was only one person left.
My aunt. Mira Bernstein.
“Are you at school yet?” she said. “I noticed you left a little later than I suggested.” Aunt Mira’s prying voice might as well have been piped in over the bus’s loudspeaker.
“I’m still on the bus,” I said in a whisper.
“Fine. I’ll call you later.” By later, of course, she meant within the next twenty minutes. At this rate, I had to assume I was going to wake up one morning and find a GPS tracker clamped to my leg. This was my life as a Prisoner of Bernstein. It was painfully obvious that this year was not going to be a piece of cake. And speaking of cake, I don’t mean to sound nasty but Aunt Mira’s food wasn’t exactly going to explode the ratings on RateMyMeatloaf.com, if you get what I’m saying.
If living with my mother’s alpha sister wasn’t bad enough, there was my sweet uncle Eli. Born and raised in Toronto, he had a tragic flaw. He was a Yankees fan. (Thank you Columbia Law School, class of ’83.) I’m sorry, I adore you, New York, but I was born in Massachusetts for crying out loud. Couldn’t he just root for something harmless like the Blue Jays?
I closed my eyes, but that only seemed to enhance the stink of body odour permeating the bus. It seemed so unfair that one un-showered person could hog all the clean air.
I dropped the phone back into my handbag. The only thing that was going to save me this year was my sister, Leah. Until November second she’d be all mine at Mira’s, and then?
The wedding!
It didn’t matter that I had been stuck in Hong Kong with Mom and Dad all summer while Leah was still in New York. Thanks to the internet, we swam the waters of bridal magazines, wedding gowns, and floral arrangements like pros — we were like the sockeye salmon of wedding planning. I hadn’t heard from her since she’d gone down to New York on Thursday and was dying for details. As for Ben, her groom-to-be, there was still time to get used to him, I guess.
With nothing else to do I peered down at Hope and Inspiration for the Single Soul . Gingie-Locks was completely engrossed in her book. I strained my neck to get a better view.
She was reading a story about thirty-eight-year-old “Rachel Schwartz,” who had given up hope of ever finding a mate after experiencing two broken engagements and a string of failed relationships. When it looked like things couldn’t possibly get any worse, she suffered a terrible car accident and was rushed to the emergency room with a smashed-up foot.
Her encounter with the on-call podiatrist changed her life forever. They were instantly drawn to each other, started dating, and eventually got married in a fairy tale wedding. Not a bad story at all.
I was jarred out of Rachel Schwartz’s honeymoon when Gingie-Locks turned in her seat. She took a sip from her travel coffee mug, looked at me with fern green eyes, and asked in an affable voice, “Am I reading too quickly for you?”
I gulped. “Um … no. It’s perfect.”
She smiled and nodded, then peered down at the book again.
I sighed. For the last two years in New York, I was free as the wind. And now? I couldn’t even steal a glance without getting busted.

chapter 2
To Share a House with a Yankees Fan

All dirty bricks and token windows, the Moriah Hebrew High School for Girls squatted sadly on a tract of exhausted shrubs. Winding through a bustle of girls I entered the building and managed to navigate my way to homeroom for English. It was my third day in eleventh grade at Moriah and I started class as I always did when I found myself at yet another new school: studying my new classmates. I peered around the room while Miss Weiss took attendance.
“Rebecca Abramson.”
Never let a set of great cheekbones go to waste. Some side-bangs and you’d be a stunner.
“Dahlia Engel.”
You seem nice enough, but I’m thinking that your soul might be part graphing calculator.
“Shira Wasser.”
Now we’re talking.
Shira’s strawberry blond hair fell in a loose crimp over her shoulders, cascading past tiny pearl earrings. Her starched white Oxford shirt rested perfectly on her navy pleated skirt. Somehow, on Shira, our school uniform looked like it was a Ralph Lauren.
Shira flipped her hair and pulled her shoulders back. “Here,” she said, her voice ringing across the room.
Every class has a Shira, and every school has a ruling one too, although there’s no question that a Toronto Shira isn’t going to be in the same league as a New York Shira. Shiras are the kind of girls that decide whether a teacher controls a class or not. Shiras possess the sort of look you’ll probably have within the year. Shiras are the standard by which all other girls view themselves.
I was a Shira during my glorious reign at the Maimonides High School for Girls in New York City. I sighed at the memory of two years of endless girlfriends, sleepovers, shopping trips, and pizza — pizza that was actually edible. It all started when I bumped into Maya and Danielle in Herald Square at a Macy’s sale at the start of ninth grade. They were identical twins with chocolate brown eyes and black hair that flowed down their backs; within one week I became known as the “third twin,” and the three of us spent endless hours together. For the first time in my life I finally had a best friend who wasn’t my sister. Which is one of the perks of living in a city for more than five minutes. (Sorry, Dad. I love you with all my heart. The constant moving — not so much.)
When I entered high school my life completely transformed — from dorkulous to, well, fabulous.
You see, way back when a dude called Giovanni da Verra zzano set foot in Manhattan, he encountered corn crops, beans, and forests. When I went to high school in the city, I discovered Stella, Ralph, and Calvin. It was crazy how it all came together. I finally chucked my membership card to the Order of the Invisible, and boy had I arrived!
But that was then and this was now. I couldn’t believe that I was starting all over again — but at least my sister, Leah, would be in Toronto in mere hours.
While Miss Weiss continued taking attendance, the door opened and a freshie poked her head in the classroom.
“Mrs. Levine would like to speak to Raina Resnick.”
The principal’s office already? What could she want from me now? My eyes met Shira Wasser’s. With her stare fixed on me she leaned over to the girl next to her and whispered. My cheeks burned as they both giggled.
I plodded down the hall with an uneasy feeling about Mrs. Levine. From our first meeting last June it was clear that I was less high school student, and more rehabilitation project. Her personal urban wetland, if you will.
I entered her office where she was ensconced behind her enormous fake-wood desk. Mrs. Levine sat ramrod straight, her falcon-like eyes trailing me as I lowered myself into the moulded plastic chair facing her.
A manila file folder with my name written in black marker lay on her desk next to a cluster of photos of her with her children and grandchildren. In one of th