Daddy's Little Angel by Shani Petroff Read Free Book Online Page B

my way to my seat. Okay, it wasn’t quite as good as my fantasy, where he gave me a Gerber daisy and one of his big, crooked smiles when I reached my desk, but this was a close second.
    “Hey, Angel,” Dana Ellers said as I passed by her.
    “You were awesome at the concert,” Tracy Fine added. Marc Gomez and Rick Drager nodded in agreement. “But I knew you would be. You’ve always had that cool vibe thing going. I want to hear all about everything later,” Tracy continued.
    Tracy never even acknowledged my existence before. Not even when I was her Secret Santa last year. Now she was calling me cool and acting like we were actual friends. This was so weird. “Sure,” I said, trying to mask my nerves. No one other than Gabi and the teacher ever spoke to me in homeroom.
    I rushed to my desk and ended up tripping over my chair. I expected the class to point and laugh, but no one even snickered. Instead there were a few gasps and Dana even rushed over to check on me.
    I took my seat behind Cole and thought I was going to go into cardiac arrest when he turned around to face me. “You okay?” he asked.
    He was talking to me! Cole Daniels was talking to me! “Yeah,” I said. I considered pulling out my phone so I could snap a picture and document the moment forever, but I thought better of it.
    “Sweet concert,” he said, and ran his hand through his dark brown waves. He had the best hair I’d ever seen. Shiny, kind of floppy on the top, with the occasional golden highlight. I wondered what it felt like. Probably supersoft. I wanted to reach out and touch it, too. My hand would be in hair heaven, until he smacked it away for being some sort of freakish hair perv.
    I had to focus. I needed to answer him, to say something. This was not the time to have a brain freeze. “Yeah,” was the best I could do. On the inside, though, I was psyched. I hadn’t seen him at the concert so I wasn’t sure if he made it there. It’s a good thing, too, because if ever in my life I was crushworthy, it was at that concert all right. I was all prepped to ask him what his favorite song of the night was when Mrs. Laurel, my homeroom/science teacher, started talking, and he turned back around. But before he did, he smiled at me. An honest to goodness real smile. Just. For. Me.
    “Hi,” Gabi whispered to me. I hadn’t noticed her come in. She raised an eyebrow and looked toward Cole.
    I shrugged my shoulders. “I know!” I whispered. I really had no clue what was going on. But whatever it was, it was good. “Hey, what happened with Mrs. To—”
    “Angel, since you seem to be a little chatterbox today, why don’t you read us the morning announcements?” Mrs. Laurel interrupted. She walked over and handed me a piece of paper.
    This I could handle. “The cast list for You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown is posted outside Mrs. Torin’s classroom,” I began. “Everyone who auditioned did a wonderful job. Congratulations to the new cast.”
    I couldn’t read anymore. And not because I didn’t want to. All the text on the page started spinning. What was going on? Was I about to pass out? I closed my eyes.
    “Is there a problem, dear?” Mrs. Laurel asked.
    “No,” I said, looking back down at the paper. But there was a problem. A big one. And it had Lou written all over it. The words on the page had changed. In place of the school announcements was a brief note that repeated itself over and over again. It said, “ Angel, please reconsider. Talk to me—Love, Dad . ”
    “We don’t have all day, dear. Keep reading,” Mrs. Laurel chirped.
    How was I supposed to do that? “Actually, I’m not feeling too well. Can I skip this today?”
    “Fine.” Mrs. Laurel’s gigantic smile seemed to crack a little, which meant she was getting frustrated, but at least she wasn’t going to make me continue with the announcements. “Bring the paper up to me.”
    “ No .”
    “What?”
    I couldn’t let her have it. It had my name on