Sex Kittens and Horn Dawgs Fall in Love by Maryrose Wood Read Free Book Online Page B

with Matthew you’re going to change the way he feels, do you? Because that would be the wrong reason to do it—”
    Motherdear, who thinks she’s so smart. “No!” I say, in hot denial. “We’re friends now. We’re gonna blow the lid off the science fair, that’s all.”
    “Well, I think it’s very open of you to share your feelings with him.” Note Motherdear’s use of the O word. “And Matthew must be a very open person to hear your feelings without freaking out,” she continues, hammering her point. “So obviously you have good taste!”
    At this, I must have started to look, I don’t know, sad or something, because in a jiffy Mom was sitting on the bed next to me rubbing my back, like she used to do every night when I was little. “Sweetie pie, remember that boys at fourteen can be much less mature than girls at fourteen.” She drones on, randomly spewing overused Momisms: “Everybody grows up in their own time. . . . many fish in the sea . . . , blah blah blah . . .”
    Yeah, right. And nobody spends the rest of her life INSANELY in love with her freshman-year crush. Till now, that is.
    —although I understand these sensations intellectually, I
don’t really have direct experience—
    How could someone who gives off so much X not know what love feels like? As Mom prattles, I feel the needle on my inner dubiosity meter twitching into the red zone.
    That’s never a good sign.

5
    I Discover Who Loves Me in a Place I Have No Business Being
    I have never seen Jess looking as determined as she does right now. And that is saying something.
    “The teachers talk and talk, and most of the class is not even LISTENING. Three—THREE!—out of thirty-four students in the English class turned in their homework on time. At least Doris Jean Amberson was one of them,” she says with a sigh.
    Jess and Kat and I have gathered for our weekly mathfest in the fourth-floor math room. We find that doing math once a week for an entire Krispy Kreme–fueled morning works better than doing it every day for a shorter length of time. This way it doesn’t get boring, and we surely do look forward to the donuts.
    Kat is by far the most Komputational Kitten among us, so she generally leads the way, mathwise, but Ms. Blank is nearby if we need help. Ms. Blank is the Pound’s Math Mentor. At the moment Ms. Blank is lying on the floor. Her left hand is on her forehead, shielding her eyes, and her right hand is writing something invisible in the air. It looks like she’s conducting an orchestra while suffering from a migraine, but we know she’s actually trying to memorize the value of pi to a thousand places. It’s sort of a hobby of hers.
    Jess’s two weeks of peer tutoring with D. J. Amberson have not gone well. “She won’t let me help her at all!” Jess reported after their third session. “She sits there and does her homework, and if I offer a suggestion she just looks over her shoulder like she’s afraid someone will see us talking. I WISH I knew what was going on!” By yesterday, Jess had resolved to take matters into her own tiny, iron hands.
    “I just showed up at her school yesterday morning and tagged along. Look.” Jess shows us her binder, which now has a tab clearly labeled “A Day in the Life of D.J.” “I started with homeroom and stayed with her every period. English, social studies, math, gym, lunch, biology, study hall. WHAT an interesting experience!”
    Kat and I both have donut sugar all over the lower halves of our faces (Kitten Directive Number Eighteen: Neatness Among Kittenpals Is NOT Required!). We listen, our mouths crammed full of glazed chocolate (me) and jelly-filled (Kat).
    “First, EVERYBODY calls her Deej, which she never told me. Second, she spends most of the day trying not to get into fights.” Jess is wide-eyed. “I mean, FISTfights! One girl in her class has a scar on her cheek where some other girl SLASHED her with an umbrella!”
    “Excuse me,” Ms. Blank is speaking