Crush Control Read Online Free

the star.
    You’d think that even if I’d become less adventurous, at least I could still be flirtatious. After all, I lived with the perfect teacher. But the truth was, I never liked to risk the possibility of humiliation. Who would notice me in her shadow? It might have been easy to resent her had she not been so lovable. But that was the thing—for all the reasons everyone was drawn to her—her adorable charm, her contagious laughter, her romantic ideology—I was drawn to her, too.
    But now that we had moved across the country, we were both ready to try on new lives. She wanted to leave the eccentric lifestyle behind, and I secretly wanted to inject a little spice into my own.
    â€œA little to the left,” Mom said now, jostling her hand in that direction, and the moving men set the rectangular table down with a thud against the wooden floor.
    I looked at the table and thought of all the late nights back in Vegas where I’d sat at one end with my textbooks open, doing homework while I watched Mom and her cluster of friends drinking coffee and eating leftover fried chicken from the casino buffet. They would talk about life and love and movies. Maybe, I thought, this time the table would be surrounded with my new friends instead of Mom’s. Maybe instead of sitting around watching Glee like Becca, Lauren, and I used to do in Vegas, here in Georgia I’d rent a karaoke machine and all my new friends and I would sing along to the Glee sound track. Maybe they’d tell me I could be a star. Mom would be next door talking with the new neighbor about gardening and pruning shrubs instead of drinking coffee with the sequined-leotard-wearing, Cher-loving neighbor from Vegas.
    The moving men walked back outside and I pulled one of the kitchen chairs over to the table and sat down. Mom brought two bottles of Aquafina water over from the fridge and slid one across the kitchen table toward me like she was a casino bartender. I wondered if she realized that even though she was two thousand miles away, the lifestyle was still embedded in her simplest actions.
    I looked out the window at the lush green landscape—the clusters of leaves grouping together to enclose and canopy the yard. “I don’t remember it being this hot.”
    She nodded. “Ah, the sticky, Southern summer air. It feels like someone hosed you down with hot honey.”
    I laughed. “Exactly.”
    The movers came back in, one holding an armload of boxes and the other holding my black Panasonic stereo with the front piece broken off and dangling by a cluster of thin wires. “Looks like this got damaged.” The mover grimaced. “You got the moving insurance, right?”
    Mom sighed and shook her head.
    â€œOh,” the mover said, looking down at the mangled equipment. “Maybe it’s fixable?”
    â€œJust leave it on the table,” I said. “I’ll take a look at it.”
    The mover looked startled. Was it because he didn’t think a girl could fix electronics or simply that he hadn’t noticed I was there? He placed the stereo down on the table in front of me.
    Mom instructed them to take the boxes to her bedroom and pointed down the hall. The men lingered for a second, listening to the soft jingle of her thick silver bangle bracelets. I thought back to Hot Guy Quinton from the park and wished he had watched me with that soft longing in his eyes. Instead, he’d just looked a little baffled by me.
    â€œSo,” I said, after the movers finally walked away. “When are we going over to see Grandma and Grandpa?”
    Mom’s back stiffened and she pursed her lips ever so slightly. She looked around the house as if suddenly realizing that yes, we had moved back to Georgia, back to the small town she had escaped from eight years ago. “I don’t know,” she answered nonchalantly.
    â€œWhat do you mean, you don’t know?” When Mom decided to