Teen Idol by Meg Cabot Read Free Book Online Page B

They have to do like a hat-and-cane routine to "All That Jazz" from
Chicago
, only without the canes. Which is actually fine by them, because the sopranos are all good dancers. But we altos have to pass them the hats from this stack hidden behind the risers. It’s super hard . . . you know, for somebody like me with no sense of rhythm. By the time the bell rang for lunch, I was exhausted.
    But Luke, it turned out, was just starting to get revved up.
    "You guys actually get school credit for that?" Luke wanted to know, as we were leaving the choir room.
    It’s kind of funny that he figured out show choir was lame so fast I mean, I’d been in the choir for three whole months before I figured it out. It’s not just the padded bras "All That Jazz" is the coolest number we do. The rest of our program consists of what Mr. Hall calls Broadway show-stoppers, which include "As Long as He Needs Me" from
Oliver
(we altos especially like the line "As long as he needs me/I’ll cling on steadfastly." We sing it as "Klingon." So far Mr. Hall hasn’t noticed) and "Day by Day" from
Godspell
.
    No, the lamest part is that Mr. Hall makes us travel around and perform in elementary schools and at Kiwanis meetings and stuff. I’m totally serious. I was horrified when I found out. I wanted to kill Trina But by then it was too late; there were no more spaces open in any other classes for Ms. Kellogg to switch me into.
    In a way show choir isn’t that bad, though, because it gives the school’s most sensitive artist types a place where they can feel safe. A bunch of Troubadours actually eat lunch in the choir room, just so they don’t have to face the Kurt Schraeders of the school down in the caf.
    That isn’t why Trina always wants to eat in the choir room, though. She just wants to make sure Mr. Hall—who lunches in his office, instead of the teacher’s lounge, I don’t think Mr. Hall is very popular with the rest of the faculty—doesn’t hand out solos to some other soprano just because Trina had the misfortune not to be there at the time.
    I told Trina that over my dead body was I going to allow her competitiveness with Karen Sue Walters to get in the way of my gastronomic choices at lunchtime, so we eat in the caf and not the choir room.
    Luke had no way of knowing this, though. He looked over his shoulder at Karen Sue and the other people pulling their sack lunches out from beneath the risers as we left the choir room and went, "Isn’t class over? Why are they eating in there?"
    "Oh, you mean, what’s with the land of misfit toys?" Trina laughed long and hard at her own joke, even though, given her druthers, she’d be right down there with them.
    I was the one who had to explain. "They eat in there because they’re scared."
    "Scared of what?" Luke wanted to know.
    Then we walked into the cafeteria.
    And for the second time that day, Luke went, "Holy . . ."
    Only this time it was for a different reason.

Ask Annie
    Ask Annie your most complex interpersonal relationship questions.
    Go on, we dare you!
    All letters to Annie are subject to publication in the Clayton High School
Register
.
    Names and e-mail addresses of correspondents guaranteed confidential.
    Dear Annie,
    My boyfriend chews with his mouth open, and talks with it full of food. It’s so embarrassing! I’ve mentioned it to him a million times, but he won’t stop. How can I get him to have better manners
?
    Say It, Don’t Spray It
    Dear Spray It,
    By refusing to sit at the same table with him until he learns to eat like a gentleman. A few meals on his lonesome, and he’ll swallow before he speaks, guaranteed
.
    Annie

F IVE
    I suppose to
the uninitiated, the Clayton High School cafeteria might seem a little intimidating. I mean, you cram six hundred teenagers—we eat in two shifts—into any room, and it’s going to be noisy.
    But I guess Luke wasn’t expecting the eardrum-splitting decibels of the din.
    Then there’s the fact that besides Glenwood