Camp Confidential 05 - TTYL by Melissa J. Morgan Read Free Book Online Page B

all thoughts of Simon—and Hannah—were gone. The butterflies were back. As the cab whizzed toward her building, Natalie realized that Kyle had never finished his sentence. But that was just fine. He didn’t have to.

chapter FOUR

Jenna > SUNDAY

    Jenna slammed shut the passenger door of her dad’s car and started to trudge up the sidewalk to her mom’s house. Adam and Stephanie lagged behind, carrying their bags and shouting good-byes to their father as he pulled out of the driveway.
    Opening the front door and tossing her duffel bag down onto the floor, Jenna felt exhausted. It wasn’t like her weekend had tired her out—just like last weekend, she’d watched a bunch of movies and eaten a lot of junk food. She’d done her homework, and spent tons of time online. Her dad had even let her order a cute new pair of shoes she’d found. But none of it had been tiring. She was just tired, already, after only two weeks of being shuttled back and forth between her mom and dad. And she was tired of her dad trying to make up for the divorce by being Superdad, and tired of getting used to a new house.
    Jenna’s mom walked out of the kitchen and gave her a hug. “Welcome back, sweetie!” she said. She hugged Adam and Stephanie, too. “Bring your stuff up to your rooms, kiddos,” she went on. “Steph, I wrote down some phone messages for you, and Jenna, Nicole called last night. She said you didn’t have to call her back.”
    “Do you know what she wanted?” Jenna asked, reaching down to take hold of the strap of her bag. She hefted it onto her shoulder.
    “No, honey, she didn’t say,” her mom replied.
    “Okay, thanks,” Jenna said. She followed Adam and Stephanie up the stairs and went into her room.
    She put her bag down on her bed and slowly started to unpack it, lifting out the folded shirts and jeans that were inside. Once she was unpacked, she slid the duffel under her bed and crossed the room to sit at her desk. She picked up the phone, but Stephanie was on the extension in her room. “Steph?” Jenna asked tentatively. “Are you going to be on long? I have to call Nicole.”
    “Just a couple of minutes,” Stephanie said. “I’ll knock on your door when I’m done. Or you can use Mom’s line.”
    “It’s okay, I’ll wait,” Jenna said, and set down the receiver. She turned on her computer, which always took a while to start up, so she paced around her room for a moment. There was a knock on her door, and Steph walked in, quietly closing the door behind her.
    “I missed so many parties this weekend,” Stephanie said, sighing as she flopped down onto Jenna’s bed. She lowered her voice to almost a whisper. “Jen, I’m sick of going to Dad’s.”
    “Me too,” Jenna confided, sitting down next to her big sister and slumping down with her head in her hands. “I made plans with Nicole to hang out tonight, but we didn’t get back in time . . . I was supposed to call her at seven, and it’s almost nine thirty.”
    Stephanie made a sympathetic cluck. “That really stinks, Jenna,” she said. She straightened up suddenly. “Hey, maybe if we ask Mom, we can stay home next weekend!”
    Jenna sat up. “Really?” she asked. “Do you think she’d go for it?”
    Stephanie shrugged. “Maybe,” she said. “It’s definitely worth a shot. We’ll just explain that we haven’t felt very settled in—we just got back from camp and we’ve had to be shuttled all over the place. I bet she won’t care.”
    “Okay!” Jenna exclaimed hopefully. “Can we go ask her now?”
    “Definitely,” Steph agreed. She paused. “The only thing, though, is that I don’t want to hurt Dad’s feelings. So we can’t try to get out of going to his place every weekend. Just this once.”
    “Just this once,” Jenna repeated. She smiled. “Let’s go talk to Mom.”
    They walked down the hallway to their mother’s room and Steph rapped gently on the door. “Mom?” she called quietly. “Can we come