Reunion by Meg Cabot Read Free Book Online

bought a CD,” I said lamely.
    Gina, appalled, echoed, “A
what
?”
    “A CD.” I hadn’t even wanted to buy one, but sent out into the wilds of the mall with instructions to return with a new purchase, I had panicked, and headed into the first store I saw.
    “You know malls give me sensory overload,” I said, by way of explanation.
    Gina shook her head at me, her copper curls swaying. “You can’t really get mad at her,” she said to Adam. “She’s just so cute.”
    Adam shifted his attention from CeeCee’s sassy new outfit to me. “Yeah,” he said. “She is.” Then his gaze slipped past me, and his eyes widened. “But here come some people I’m not sure will agree.”
    I turned my head and saw Sleepy and Dopey sauntering toward us. The mall was like Dopey’s second home, but what Sleepy was doing here, I could not imagine. All of his free time, between school and delivering pizzas — he was saving up for a Camaro — was usually spent surfing. Or sleeping.
    Then he slumped down into a chair near Gina’s, and said, in a voice I’d never heard him use before, “Hey, I heard you were here.”
    Suddenly all became clear.
    “Hey,” I said to CeeCee, who was still gazing rapturously in Adam’s direction. She was trying to figure out, I could tell, just what precisely he’d meant when he’d said she could wear her new outfit to his house. Had he been sexually harassing her — as she clearly hoped — or merely making conversation?
    “Yeah?” CeeCee asked. She didn’t even bother to turn her head in my direction.
    I grimaced. I could see I was all alone on this one.
    “You got your mom’s present yet?” I demanded.
    CeeCee said, faintly, “No.”
    “Good.” I dropped my CD into her lap. “Hang on to this. I’ll go get her Oprah’s latest pick of the month. How about that?”
    “That sounds great,” CeeCee said, still without so much as a glance at me, although she did wave a twenty in the air.
    Rolling my eyes, I snatched the bill, then stomped off before I burst a blood vessel from screaming as hard as I could. You’d have screamed, too, if you’d seen what I had as I left the food court, which was Dopey trying desperately to squeeze a chair in between Sleepy and Gina.
    I don’t get it. I really don’t. I mean, I know I probably come off as insensitive and maybe even a little weird, what with the mediator thing, but deep down, I really am a caring person. I am very fair-minded and intelligent, and sometimes I’m even funny. And I know I’m not a dog. I mean, I fully blow-dry my hair every morning, and I have been told on more than one occasion (okay, by my mom, but it still counts) that my eyes are like emeralds. So what gives? How come Gina has
two
guys vying for her attention, while I can’t even get one? I mean, even dead guys don’t seem to like me so much, and I don’t think they have a whole lot of options.
    I was still mulling over this in the bookstore as I stood in line for the cashier, the book for CeeCee’s mother in my hands. That was when something brushed my shoulder. I turned around and found myself staring at Michael Meducci.
    “Um,” he said. He was holding a book on computer programming. He looked, in the fluorescent lights of the bookstore, pastier than ever. “Hi.” He touched his glasses nervously, as if to assure himself they were still there. “I thought that was you.”
    I said, “Hi, Michael,” and moved up a space in the line.
    Michael moved up with me. “Oh,” he said. “You know my name.” He sounded pleased.
    I didn’t point out that up until that day, I hadn’t. I just said, “Yeah,” and smiled.
    Maybe the smile was a mistake. Because Michael stepped a little closer, and gushed, “I just wanted to say thanks. You know. For what you did to your, um, stepbrother today. You know. To make him let me go.”
    “Yeah,” I said again. “Well, don’t worry about it.”
    “No, I mean it. Nobody has ever done anything like that for me —