All the Way Home by Wendy Corsi Staub Read Free Book Online Page A

says pointedly. “I know I heard her. Everyone at Carvel heard her. She wants the world to know that she and Ryan are going out.”
    “Oh, really? 1 didn’t hear her say that,” Molly lies, intent on Ryan, who’s skillfully peddling across the street in their direction.
    She admires the way he wears his Yankees cap backward. That must be why his face is ruddy from the sun. The other day, when she bumped into him at the gas station where they were both getting air in their bike tires, she noticed that he has a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of his nose, and that the tip of it is peeling from a recent sunburn.
    Lately, she notices everything about Ryan Baker.
    Too bad he doesn’t notice her.
    Except . . .
    Did he just glance in her direction as he rode his bike up over the curb onto the sidewalk a few yards away?
    “Hi, Ryan!” she calls impulsively, then just as impulsively wants to crawl under the bench and hide.
    Maybe he’ll think Rebecca said it, she thinks hopefully, and glances at her friend, whose nose is buried in some dumb library book she’s about to return. It’s about cats. Rebecca loves cats. She’s wearing a pink T-shirt with a kitten’s face appliquéd below her shoulder. Molly gave it to her for her birthday last month, but now she wishes she hadn’t. It looks so juvenile.
    “Hey, Molly. Hi, Rebecca,” Ryan says, slowing his bike in front of them.
    Molly realizes he’s only waiting for Andy, who’s stuck on the other side of the street, waiting for traffic. Still, Ryan didn’t have to stop in front of her. He didn’t have to say hi.
    No, hey . He’d said hey, in that casual way of his, around a piece of gum he’s chewing.
    “Hey, Ryan,” Molly says.
    “Yeah?” He backpedals, balancing his bike somehow without falling over.
    She feels herself blush under his glance. “Oh . . . I just meant, hey. You know, as in ‘hi.’ ” Which you already said, you idiot .
    He treats her to a good-natured grin. “Hi. What are you guys doing?”
    “Going to the library,” Rebecca informs him, looking up from her book.
    “Yeah? That’s cool.”
    Yeah, right . Molly wants to smack Rebecca for speaking up. She had planned to tell Ryan they were going to walk down to the lake, and then Ryan would tell her that was some coincidence because he and Andy were on their way to the lake, too, to go fishing, and she would look stunned, and then he would say, “Why don’t you come along?”
    And then Andy and Rebecca would vanish conveniently the way things seem to happen in fantasies, and Molly would be alone with Ryan, and he would kiss her passionately and ask her to marry him .
    Or something like that.
    “So what’s been going on with you this past week?” she asks lamely, praying that the traffic will keep whizzing by, tons of traffic, and Andy will be stuck across the street for at least another hour.
    “You mean since school got out? Nothing,” Ryan says. “This town is beat.”
    At least he didn’t mention dating Jessica.
    “Yeah,” Molly agrees. “This town is beat.”
    “You guys going to that party out at the Curl?”
    “Party?” Molly echoes. “When?”
    “Friday night.”
    “At the Curl?” she echoes, just to make sure.
    Ryan nods and says, “Where else?”
    The Curl, Molly knows, is the crescent-shaped stretch of beach that dips out into Lake Charlotte. During the day, it’s filled with people—mostly little kids splashing in the almost landlocked shallow water between there and the shore. But at night, all the cool kids hang out on the stretch of beach, drinking beer around bonfires and doing who knows what else.
    Molly was at the Curl a week ago, with Ozzie and his mother, but she has never been out there after dark.
    “Yeah, we’ll be there,” she tells Ryan, who nods, then rides off with a wave as Andy catches up with him.
    “Molly! We can’t go to a party at the Curl,” Rebecca says.
    “Why not?”
    “My parents won’t let me, for one