Surviving High School Read Online Free Page B

a pool, with people swimming from place to place. It could be like Venice, with men in silly hats pushing their gondolas downcanals instead of streets. Emily wouldn’t have minded getting in a boat: Those hardly ever wrecked, right?
Titanic
was, like, a hundred years ago.
    A boat never went so fast that a crash would kill you. A boat rocked gently on the waves, putting you to sleep. A boat would never have spun out of control because some stupid teenage boy was at the wheel.

CHAPTER THREE
    It wasn’t until the second week of school that Emily bumped into Nick Brown.
    At lunch on Monday, as Emily entered the cafeteria and began walking to what had become her usual spot in the corner, she noticed Dominique and Lindsay sitting in the no-man’s-land between the band geeks and the wrestling-team jocks. The two girls were leaning close to each other, whispering and giggling. Whatever they were talking about must have been top secret—and important enough that they’d leave their usual spot at the center table in order to get some privacy.
    Emily altered her route through the cafeteria so that it would take her right behind the girls. When she neared them, she slowed her pace, both so that they wouldn’t hear her footstepsand to have more time to overhear them. As she approached, Emily distinctly heard Lindsay say “Ben Kale.” Emily slowed to a glacial pace, but it was no use: A few more steps and she’d be out of listening range.
    To her right was an empty table, close enough that she’d hear everything. But could she really risk occupying a random table all by herself? She looked around the cafeteria, hoping to find Kimi and summon her over, but couldn’t spot her anywhere.
    “Come on. What happened to you at the party Friday?” Lindsay whispered. “It was, like, one second I was pouring you a drink, then the next,
poof
. You and Ben were gone.”
    There was no choice. Emily had to hear this. She sat with her back to Dominique and Lindsay and prayed that they wouldn’t notice her. She pulled a bag of almonds out of her backpack. Her new strategy was to eat one food item at a time in order to avoid a repeat of the yogurt incident.
    “And then you didn’t respond to
one
text all weekend?” continued Lindsay. “
Tell me
you made out with Ben and ran off to Vegas to get married.”
    Emily bit down a little too hard on an almond, and a burst of pain filled her jaw as her teeth knocked against each other. The thought of Dominique putting her tongue in Ben’s mouth made her want to either cry or gag. Possibly both.
    “I wish,” said Dominique. “I was
totally
ready to jump him when we got to the bedroom. But then Spencer was waiting there!”
    Emily’s shoulders relaxed a little.
Thank you, Spencer.
    “Spencer?” Lindsay asked. “As in ‘Go Lizards’ Spencer?”
    “I don’t get why Ben is friends with that guy.
Such
a tool.”
    “Yeah. He’s definitely a fixer-upper and a half. His body’s not so bad, though. If you like, you know, bodybuilder-type guys—”
    “Which I don’t,” said Dominique. “Ben and I had to sit talking to him for, like, half an hour while he told me about his dad’s landscaping business.
And
he spilled his drink on my cell. I’m totally unfriending him on Facebook.”
    “What about Ben?” asked Lindsay. “Did anything happen at all?”
    “He’d probably have been all over me if Spencer hadn’t gotten in the way—I mean, I
did
catch him checking me out while we were sitting there, before he ended up leaving me alone with Spencer for the rest of the night. I think it’s one of those things where he wants to be a good guy and let Spencer have a chance with me first. So all I have to do now is make sure Ben knows I’m interested in
him
and not his friend—then he’ll be all mine.”
    “But wait,” said Lindsay, “Ben never came back to the party.”
    “He said he was tired and that he was going to his room to sleep.”
    “So he totally just crawled into bed at