All-American Girl by Meg Cabot Read Free Book Online Page A

children go, I am a major bargain. I don’t even eat that much, either, seeing as how I hate almost all food except hamburgers, the Bread Lady’s baguettes, and dessert.
    So I shouldn’t have even felt guilty about ditching art class. Not really.
    But as I stood there, the familiar scent of turpentine washed over me, and I could hear, way up at the top of the stairs, the faint sound of classical music, and the occasional squawk from Joe the crow. Iwas suddenly filled with a strange longing to climb those stairs, go to my bench, sit down, and draw.
    But then I remembered the humiliation I had endured the last time I’d been in that room. And in front of that David guy, too! I mean, yeah, he wasn’t as cute as Jack, or anything. But he was still a guy! A guy who liked Save Ferris! And who had said he liked my boots!
    Okay, no way was I going up those stairs. I was taking a stand. A stand against the system.
    Instead, I waited in the vestibule, praying nobody would come in while I was huddled there and say, “Oh, hi, Sam. Aren’t you coming upstairs?”
    As if anybody there would even remember my name. Except possibly Susan Boone.
    But nobody came in. When two minutes were up, I cautiously opened the door and looked out at the rain-soaked street.
    Theresa and the station wagon were gone. It was safe. I could come out.
    The first place I went was Capitol Cookies. Well, how could I not? It looked so warm and inviting, what with the rain and all, and I happened to have a dollar sixty-eight in my pocket, exactly as much as a Congressional Chocolate Chunk. The cookie they handed me was still warm from the oven, too. I slipped it into the pocket of my black Gore-Tex coat. They don’t allow food in Static, where I was going next.
    They weren’t playing Garbage there that afternoon. They were playing the Donnas. Not ska, but perfectly acceptable. I went over to where they had some headphones plugged into the wall so people could sample the CDs they were thinking about buying. I spent a nice half hour or so listening to the Less Than Jake CD I’d wanted but couldn’t afford now that my mom had seen to it that myfunding for such items was shut off.
    As I listened, I snuck bits of cookie from my pocket into my mouth and told myself that what I was doing wasn’t all that wrong. Fighting the system, I mean. Besides, look at Catherine: for years her parents have been forcing her to go to Sunday school while they attend mass. Since there is, like, a two-year age difference between Catherine and each of her brothers, all three of them were in different religion classes, so she never knew until this year that Marco and Javier, after their mom dropped them all off, were waving good-bye and then ducking around the corner to Beltway Billiards. She only found out when her class let out early one day, and she went to look around for her brothers, and they were nowhere to be seen.
    So basically for years Catherine’s been sitting there, listening to her religion teachers tell her to resist temptation, etc., while it turns out the whole time her brothers—and pretty much all the rest of the cool kids who go to her church—have been next door, getting the high score on Super Mario.
    So what does Catherine do now? She waves good-bye to her mom just like Marco and Javier, and then she, too, goes to Beltway Billiards—and works on her geometry homework in the glow of Delta Force.
    And does she feel bad about it? No. Why not? Because she says if the Lord really is all-forgiving, like they taught her in Sunday school, He will understand that she really does need the extra study time or she will flunk geometry and never get into a good college and make a success of herself.
    So why should I feel bad about skipping my drawing lesson? I mean, it is only a drawing lesson . Catherine, on the other hand, is skipping out on God .
    Surely my parents, in the unlikely event that they find out