Holly in Love by Caroline B. Cooney Read Free Book Online

by answering that one. I said, “What did you like best about the movie, Jamie?”
    “Leaving,” he said firmly.
    I laughed in spite of myself.
    Christopher was sweeping snow off the steps, getting rid of the afternoon’s flurries. He paused midsweep and stared at me getting out of Jamie Winter’s car.
    “Bye, Jamie,” I said, slamming the door. “Thanks a lot.”
    “It was a pleasure,” he said gravely.
    I scurried up the sidewalk, and Christopher leaned on his broom and said, “Jamie Winter ? Holly, he’s my age. You’re a senior . And he’s a bore, besides.”
    “He is not boring,” I said. “Anyhow, he just gave me a ride home.” I thought of how I had wanted to hold Jamie’s hand, and I flushed.
    Nothing slips by Christopher. “What happened to the bus?” he said, eyeing my hot cheeks suspiciously.
    “I missed it.”
    Christopher looked at me as if any fool knew that missing the bus was a ruse to get a ride home with Jamie. He said, “So old Holly’s falling for Jamie Winter, huh? Can’t you date someone your own age?”
    “I’m not dating him!” I yelled. “I’m not even thinking about him! I just took advantage of his car!”
    “That’s typical of girls. Girls are selfish, unpleasant, grabbing creeps. All you want is free rides and gasoline. Don’t give a thing in return.”
    Snow has its uses. I dropped everything, made the quickest snowball in history, and got my worthless little brother right in the face. What do I mean—little? He’s now six inches taller than I am. I have to throw uphill. I felt that I was defending old Alison’s right to give nothing in return for free rides. Christopher and I had a snowball fight that threatened to be the death of us both, and I stopped only because I had a sudden thought, not related to Christopher or Alison or rides or snow.
    Why had Jamie asked me what I was doing Friday night?

Six
    I HAD PLENTY OF time to wonder about Jamie.
    On Sunday morning, Lydia’s father told my father how nice it was that the girls had all gone to a movie together just like old times. My father said, “I thought they were going to play Monopoly.” Lydia’s father said, “They’re too old for that, Stewart. Where’d you get an idea like that?”
    Fortunately my father is nonviolent. All that happened was a sad lecture in how I disappointed his trust, and he grounded me for two weeks. Very grounded. No nothing .
    I stared into the attic of my dollhouse and wondered if I should have a maid living up there. Decorate it in gray and white and black, appropriate for a girl in domestic service.
    But I couldn’t get interested.
    “Kate’s parents,” I told my mother and father at supper, “don’t care what she sees or what she reads. They believe she is sufficiently mature to sift the reasonable and the good from the unreasonable and the bad. They feel—”
    “Holly,” said my mother softly and with a lot of hostility, “I don’t care in the slightest what Kate’s parents feel about anything.”
    From the look in her eyes it was best to drop the topic and accept being grounded a little more gracefully.
    I kept thinking about Jamie Winter.
    Very nice person. Very good-looking. Very amusing. Definitely no more fond of frigid weather than I.
    But try as I might, I could not manage a single romantic thought toward him. He was just sixteen years old. Christopher’s age, for heaven’s sake. Just some boy who stood around waiting for the same bus.
    Perhaps he would be driving every day now, though, if his mother would let him use the car that often. Would I mind if he didn’t stand with me and crack jokes while everybody else sculpted snow people? If he offered to drive me home every day, the way Grey drove Hope, would I accept?
    That was a tough question. On climate grounds, definitely I would accept a ride rather than endure the cold. On boyfriend grounds, that meant accepting the teasing and the funny looks from an entire school, and I doubted that