All the Way by Megan Stine Read Free Book Online

multicolored bolero cutaway cardigan at Urban Outfitters, to layer over my skinny turquoise knit top and jeans. I wanted to look so fabulous that I wouldn’t care what Joey had written or what everyone was thinking. I’d just suck in my breath and walk through the halls and hold my head high, proud to be me, like nothing life-changing had happened.
    It was a good act, anyway. I should get an Oscar.
    â€œUh-oh. Don’t look now, but there he is.”
    â€œWhere?” I tried not to be too obvious about looking around.
    Too bad she didn’t warn me in time, because before I could spot him, Joey banged right into me a few feet away from my locker.
    â€œOuch!”
    He didn’t even say excuse me. He just let his burly shoulder smash into mine, and his heavy backpack swing into my ribs, and then kept right on walking.
    What an animal. But I was sort of glad he didn’t stop, because I could feel everyone in the hall waiting to see if I’d go off on him, waiting for the fireworks, waiting for me to either call him an asshole or fall all over him with more unleashed sexual passion or something. Instead, I just ignored him and opened my locker, like I didn’t have a thing to say to him, like he was just a turd under my foot, not to be bothered with.
    Two Oscars.
    â€œAre you okay?” Ariel whispered, hanging at my side for moral support.
    â€œI’m fine,” I lied, trying to be stronger than I felt right then, trying to make it true. My shoulder hurt, and more than that, my face was beginning to feel hot. I could tell a lot of people were staring at me.
    Had they all read his Web page? And did they all believe what he said? Or did they know it was a bunch of lies, and they were waiting to see how I’d murder him?
    Or maybe they were just staring because we’d been seen together at the game Saturday night . . . and now I was one of the people everyone thought of as datable.
    Okay, so I was kidding myself with that last one. I like to call it “being optimistic.”
    I grabbed my American Government book and hurried into Mr. Mori’s class, bracing myself as I walked in the door. Guess who’s in my Am. Gov. class?
    Yeah. Molly. Plus two of her friends.
    Luckily, Molly sits way in the back of the room, and I sit up front, so I didn’t have to pass her. But Amber and some other girl who were closer to me started whispering. I heard the words slut , wiener , and pig and then a lot of snotty laughing.
    Great. Now Molly’s friends were making fun of my miniature pig collection?
    Of course I wanted to melt into the floor or run out of there in tears. But I wasn’t going to do it. I wasn’t going to let them win.
    I’m a quality person, I kept telling myself, a good student and a nice girl. So nothing Joey Perrone said about me was going to turbo-sink my life.
    That was before I saw the drawing on the board.
    Someone had sketched out a cartoon of a bunch of little pigs in a house, staring out the windows, begging to get out. The speech balloons said, “Help us! Save us! Save us from Carmen! HELLLP!”
    The icing on the cake was the sign over the door to the house. It had my last name: Salgado.
    It was a pretty good drawing, too.
    Wow. I couldn’t believe how mean people could be. At that point, I was fighting back tears. I tried not to let anyone see.
    I held my head up high and raised my hand four times in class—way more than usual—just to show everyone that I wasn’t ashamed of myself or too embarrassed to speak or anything. But inside, I was seriously hurting. This whole thing was so unfair. How could everyone believe Joey and think I was the kind of slut he made me out to be?
    Of course the answer was easy: they didn’t know me. No one at Norton knew me well enough to know the truth except Arial and Gina. No one realized that I was so far from a slut, it wasn’t even funny.
    And in a weird way, I knew it was partly my