Little Divas by Philana Marie Boles Read Free Book Online

glimpse of his braces showing through his half smile. “It’s ’bout ninety degrees out here.” He stood up and waited for me to do the same. He even had on crisp new tennis shoes.
    I sat there waiting for the joke to come, wondering if he was going to take off running and laughing if I actually did stand up. Maybe he was going to try and trip me when I started walking.
    “Man, come on,” he insisted with a laugh that sounded a bit nervous. “For real. Before the truck leaves.”
    And so, grudgingly, and definitely full of suspicion, I walked with him over to the yellow ice cream truck that was parked behind the basketball court. Neither of us said a word while we waited in line, but when it was our turn, Travis spoke to the old man who owned the truck.
    “Let me get two of them ice cream bars,” he said. But then he turned to me. “Cool?”
    I shrugged. “I don’t really like ice cream bars.”
    “They got Push-Ups,” he suggested.
    “A cherry freeze,” I decided.
    “Make that one ice cream bar,” he told the man, “and a cherry freeze, then.” The freckles across his nose were still there. His eyes were the same. But since when did Travis Jones act this pleasant?
    He paid for our snacks and handed me mine, and we walked back to the table. Travis took a big huge bite and started talking with his mouth full.
That
was definitely a Travis thing to do.
    “So you comin’ to the pool party or what?” he asked.
    I shrugged.
    “It’s gonna be tight,” he said. “We already started making some mixes. We got all the new cuts and everything.”
    I slurped up some of my cherry freeze.
    “So, um,” he said after a while of just listening to the sounds of us eating, “when you gone let me get that kiss?”
    I jerked my head to look at him.
“What?”
    He laughed a little. “You don’t remember when you left me hangin’?”
    I started pumping my legs back and forth underneath the bench. “You don’t remember when you killed my fish?”
    He chuckled. “I know you’re not still mad about your little homey.”
    Through clenched teeth I said, “My little
homey?”
I looked away and felt myself beginning to seethe as I thought about what he’d just said.
    I
definitely
still hated Travis Jones.
    “Look.” He nudged me. “On everything. You’re the one who dropped him.”
    “Yeah, but whose fault was it that I did?”
    “Not mine.”
    I jumped off of the bench and started walking away.
    “Man,” he called, “where you going?”
    I spotted a green plastic garbage can and dumped the rest of that stupid cherry freeze right into it.
    Travis cracked up laughing and called out, “That ain’t even cool, Cassidy. Man, where you going?”
    I didn’t answer. Because I didn’t know.
    It was beginning to feel like forever. I’d been sitting on the hood of Mary’s car for a really long time before Rikki
finally
found me.
    “Have you seen Mary?” I demanded as soon as she was standing in front of me.
    “Down there.” Rikki gestured with her thumb back toward the Court. “Watching Archie hoop.”
    “Well, I’m ready to go,” I said.
    Rikki laughed a little. “So why are you sitting up here mad?” she asked.
    “I’m not.”
    She shook her head. “I asked T. Money where you went and he’s like, ‘Man, I don’t know. Man, she trippin’.’”
    There are so many times when I wonder whether or not I would like Rikki at all if she weren’t my cousin.
This
was one of those moments. I decided then that I would not.
    After she’d gone around to the passenger side of the car and unlocked the door, I crawled into the backseat and sat there with my arms folded across my chest, with my mouth in a pout, and determined not to answer.
    “Ooh,” she started in. “Darwin is—”
    “Don’t talk to me.” I stopped her before she started in on her bragging.
    “Dang,”
she said. “What’s wrong with you?”
    “You left me,” I reminded her. “Alone. With Travis, of all people.”
    “Because,