Cloudy with a Chance of Boys by Megan McDonald Read Free Book Online

have to go to the library and spend two hours with a bunch of delinquents.”
    “Ha, ha. Very funny.”
    “Look, you just stay after and help your homeroom teacher. Once I had to write a short essay about some famous genius that flunked out of middle school. But most times there’s nothing for you to do, so you get to play Sudoku.”
    How did Alex know so much about big- or little- D detention? First the shirt, now this . . . Or maybe she got detention for wearing that shirt to school?
    “So, are you coming to school or not?”
    “Not.”
    “Well, don’t think I’m going to go look at the Drama Club list and find out for you. I can’t, anyway.”
    “Can’t? Or won’t?” Silence. Alex flipped over onto her side, facing away from me. “Fine.”
    “Fine,” I said, turning to go.
    “Can you at least get my homework?” Alex asked. “Algebra and biology.”
    “Boy-ology,” I muttered. It just came out. In less than thirty minutes, I’d gone from making French toast for my sister to acting as mean as stinging sleet.
    “And bring me home some Skittles?”
    “You are so not funny.”
    Just then, the sky opened up and rain slashed the window.
    Great. Now I’d get poured on. I’d really have to run if I hoped to have a prayer of catching the bus. One more late slip might land me in bad kids detention. In capital- D detention, I would not be playing Sudoku.

The day just went from bad to worse.
    I was sitting in Earth Science, my favorite class at the moment, when out of nowhere, a wadded-up note hit me in the head. I looked around. Olivia wasn’t even in this class.
    I opened it a teeny-tiny bit to try to read it without someone, a.k.a. Wire Rims, spying on me. Not coming to detention after school. Sorry! It was signed with a fancy letter O, big enough to rival Oprah’s autograph. Like that was supposed to make it not so bad.
    Olivia. How did she do that? She must have given it to somebody else to pass to me. I was thinking how I’d never speak to her again if she left me alone with Wire Rims, when an announcement crackled over the loudspeaker.
    “Stevie Reel to the front office. Mr. Petry? Is Stevie Reel in class? Please send him down to the office.”
    Him? The whole class erupted in laughter. Suddenly Mr. Petry’s giant jellyfish weather phenomenon was not so interesting. All eyes were on me. I felt my face go thermal and turn bright red. Weather alert: global warming had just reached classroom 11.
    “Did they say Steven Reel?” somebody asked.
    “Hey, Reel, make sure you don’t stop in the boys’ bathroom on the way to the office,” somebody else jeered.
    I zoomed out of there before I had to hear the standard string of sixth-grade-boys-being-jerks jokes.
    The office! Now what? Did I do something wrong? I hope I didn’t have capital- D detention. But Dad had already signed off on the paper saying I had to stay after school. Did something happen? Somebody got hurt? Alex was sick for real and they rushed her to the emergency room?
    I hurried over to the woman at the main desk who was clicking her yellow happy-face nails a mile a minute on the keyboard. “Hi, um, I’m Stevie Reel.”
    “You’re Stevie?” she asked, glancing up but still clicking. “I was expecting — never mind. Your mom’s on the phone.”
    “My mom?” I asked, like I hadn’t heard from her in a hundred years or something. Why isn’t Mom at the studio?
    “You can take it on that phone.” She nodded to a desk in the corner. “Just press line three.”
    “Mom?” I asked. “Is everything okay? Why are you calling me in the middle of —”
    “It’s me, okay?” the voice said. “I had to talk to you.”
    “Alex?” I whispered. “W-what are you . . . where are you . . . why are you . . .” I stammered. Finally, I eked out a whole sentence. “I was in the middle of a class, Mom, ” I said for the benefit of Happy Nails. “Why are you calling me?”
    “Sorry I got you out of class, but —”
    “You told