Reunion by Meg Cabot Read Free Book Online Page 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.
    â€œHey,” I said to CeeCee, who was still gazingrapturously 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?
    â€œYeah?” 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.
    â€œYou got your mom’s present yet?” I demanded.
    CeeCee said, faintly, “No.”
    â€œGood.” 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?”
    â€œThat 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 evena 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.
    â€œUm,” 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.”
    â€œYeah,” I said again. “Well, don’t worry about it.”
    â€œNo, I mean it. Nobody has ever done anything like that for me—I mean, before you came to school at the Mission, no one ever stood up to Brad Ackerman. He got away with everything. With murder, practically.”
    â€œWell,” I said. “Not anymore.”
    â€œNo,” Michael said with a nervous laugh. “No, not anymore.”
    The person ahead of me stepped up to the cashier, and I moved into her place. Michael moved, too, only he went a little too far, and ended up colliding with me. He said, “Oh, I’m sorry,” and backed up.
    â€œThat’s okay,” I said. I began to wish, even if it had meant risking a brain hemorrhage, that I’d stayed with Gina.
    â€œYour hair,” Michael said in a soft voice, “smells really good.”
    Oh my God. I thought I was going to