Making Out by Megan Stine Read Free Book Online

I’ll be flying. Is 7:30 okay to pick you up tomorrow nite?
    MKazanjian: sure, but there’s a problem. I have to be home by 9:30. Can you believe that?
    MKazanjian: Luke? You still there?
    MKazanjian: hello?
    LPerchik: sorry . . . gotta take a call from my dad. back in a sec . . .
    Marianna waited more like a thousand seconds, but he didn’t come back to the chat. Obviously, he had dumped her. She couldn’t honestly blame him. What guy wanted to go out with a girl who had a bedtime ?
    Then an e-mail from Luke popped up in her in-box.
    Hi—Sorry, the movie doesn’t get out till 9:45. Maybe you’d be better off with a matinee instead—Luke
    A matinee? A movie in the afternoon, when only little kids were there? How completely and utterly humiliating. He was mocking her, of course, probably to make himself feel better about canceling their date. No doubt he’d spread the news all over school first thing the next morning. Tell everyone that she wasn’t allowed to stay out past frigging 9:30 on a Friday night. She might as well crawl into a hole and die.
    Her cell phone rang in her purse, and she dove for it. Maybe he was calling to apologize?
    Nope. It was only Heather.
    â€œHi,” Marianna said, too embarrassed to tell her what had happened with Luke. “What’s up?”
    â€œI’m at Lisa Marie’s, and we’re studying for the American lit midterm. Can we borrow your notes on Moby-Dick ?”
    â€œSure,” Marianna said, agreeing to e-mail the notes. She changed the subject. “But you’ve got to promise me something. Promise me we’ll all go to the prom as a group, like we planned.”
    â€œDefinitely,” Heather said. “I’m pumped for that.”
    Not that Marianna’s dad was going to let her stay out late on prom night. She’d have to really work on him to even let her go with a group of girls at all. But at least she’d be there, and she’d have on a killer dress, and she’d make Luke sorry he’d treated her like a kid.
    In the background, Marianna heard Heather repeating the message to Lisa Marie, who agreed weakly.
    â€œThank you,” Marianna said. “You two are the best. You always say the right things.”
    But just in case they didn’t, she would wait until tomorrow to tell them how Luke had dumped her.

Chapter 6
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    â€œSqueeze in, everyone,” Mr. Rayburn told the third period civics class the next morning as he wrote a list of terms on the chalkboard and waved people into the room. “Mr. Young was called away for an emergency, so we’re combining both groups today.”
    Chairs squeaked and tables groaned across the linoleum floor.
    â€œMr. Young’s people, just push those tables against the wall—you can sit on them,” Mr. Rayburn said.
    Marianna glanced up from the civics chapter she had been skimming, trying to cram during the five minutes before class started—which was what happened when she was so pissed at someone, she blew off the reading the night before. She spotted Luke, the very someone she was pissed at, standing in the doorway to the classroom.
    He met her eyes with a question, but she looked away quickly. Was he wondering why she had skipped tempo training that morning? Easy one. Tempo training was optional on Fridays. Why show up and give him another chance to humiliate her?
    The room echoed with desks and tables being pushed back and scooted around. When the crowd settled, Luke was sitting knees up, back against the wall, on the floor, directly in her line of sight.
    She kept her head bent, skimming the chapter over and over but not taking in a word of it.
    â€œSo who can tell me what the Supreme Court’s role was in deciding the 2000 election?” Mr. Rayburn asked. “And how does it demonstrate our system of checks and balances?”
    Marianna’s hand went up. “It doesn’t. The Supreme