Please, Please, Please Read Online Free Page B

doesn’t mean anything against you,” I told her. Morgan thinks my mother looks down on her. She doesn’t, not really. “She just, it’s true that . . .”
    “My mother says it’s important to clean your nails,” Zoe said.
    We all laughed. Zoe is good at breaking the tension. She has four older sisters, so she gets practice.
    “That’s why CJ is a superstar, and I have three nail clippers,” Zoe added.
    I shook my head. “Don’t say that.” The last thing I need is my new best friend calling me a star, too, thinking I’m a show-off. I just want to be normal, one of the crowd, like her.
    “What?” Zoe asked. “Not that you don’t have clean nails or anything. I’m sure your nails are clean.”
    “I meant, I’m not even close to a superstar,” I explained. “At all. If my dance friend Fiona ever heard me called a star she would get a good laugh—I fall out of my turns.”
    “Fiona is a boring bimbo,” Morgan said.
    I had to laugh. “That’s true.” Morgan, Fiona, and I had been the three best in Level One. Morgan had the best turn-out, Fiona had the best arches, and I had the longest neck. We envied one another’s parts.
    “So who cares what Fiona thinks,” Zoe said. “The bimbo.” All four of us were smiling. Poor Fiona.
    I shook my head. “I really wanted to go apple picking.”
    “Or at least hay-stacking,” Zoe coughed.
    Olivia scrunched her face and said, “Yuck.”
    “I like apples,” I protested.
    “Yeah, apples,” Zoe said, grinning. “An apple a day.”
    The bell rang. “Uh-oh,” Zoe said. “I’m dead.”
    Morgan grabbed Olivia’s arm and asked, “It’s so pathetic, don’t you think, when all some girls obsess about is boys, boys, boys?”
    Olivia looked up at me for a second but then nodded at Morgan. “I do,” she said. Zoe ran down the hall toward French, and I followed Morgan and Olivia into Spanish.

six
    M organ left Spanish before I got my stuff together and was already in her seat by the time I got back to Ms. Cress’s for math/science. I felt like throwing up. She looked so serious and sad. I passed her a note saying, “I’m sorry. Please, please, please don’t be mad.”
    “About what?” she wrote back. Then she passed a note to Olivia, and I saw Olivia turn around and nod at Morgan before she glanced back at me.
    After math/science, Morgan was out of her seat and the room before the bell finished ringing.
    “Wait up,” I called to her, grabbing my stuff. “Hey!” It’s not like she could avoid me. We have every period except eighth together. “Morgan!”
    She turned around. So did everybody in the hall. I had been yelling. “What?” she whispered, looking around.
    I opened my mouth but nothing came out. My right knee wouldn’t stop wobbling, so I had to rest that foot on top of the other. “It’s-it’s-it’s not what you think,” I started to explain.
    “What isn’t?” Morgan took a drink from the water fountain. Tommy passed by going to his locker but didn’t look at me.
    “The friendship rings,” I whispered. I hadn’t come up with a plan. All I could think was, Please, words, please come out in some order that will make her stop looking so angry .
    “I don’t care,” she said, staring me right in the eyes. That’s just how she talks to her dad the few times he calls. Yeah, uh-huh, I don’t care, ’bye.
    “Morgan.”
    “Olivia’s waiting for me.” She turned around and went to the lockers. It was pretty obvious she didn’t want me to go, too, and my locker is right down the row from hers, so I didn’t know what to do. I leaned against the wall and tried not to cry.
    Everything had been going so well: I’m in Level Three, I have an amazing best friend wearing a friendship ring with me, and an adorable, sarcastic boyfriend. Nobody could wish for a better start to seventh grade, except maybe please, please, please don’t let it all crash into bits like it’s doing now.
    My eyes were closed as I pressed into fifth