The Islanders by Katherine Applegate Read Free Book Online Page A

whining something about not wanting to get all dressed up. I don’t want to, she says in a little boohoo voice.
    Then the little girl is older, but still wearing the ridiculous dress with the ridiculous bow. She advancing uncertainlyacross a darkened room, toward a corner where all that she can see are two intense, staring eyes. She’s afraid, but she can’t stop because the eyes are telling her to come closer. Come here. Come here and give me some sugar .
    And then, once more, the girl—the girl that is me—is somewhere else. She’s lying in bed. And it’s like maybe she’s wet the bed because the sheets are warm and damp. She feels guilty; what if someone finds out? She plays with the ridiculous bow and pulls the covers over her head. The bow is magic. It can make her invisible.
    And then I wake up. I feel guilty and ashamed. I also feel some lingering sense of undefinable pleasure, and that’s the worst feeling of all.
    And then the feelings fade. After a while I fall back to sleep and dream no more dreams.

FIVE
    â€œOH, NO,” ZOEY SAID, PUSHING her way back through the crowd. “Oh, no. He’s going to freak.”
    She backed away from the list that had been posted on the bulletin board near the principal’s office. Other kids took her place, crowding in to read the names on the list. Zoey glanced apprehensively down the hallway, but in the early preclass crowd it was impossible to spot Lucas. The halls were jammed with loudly gossiping, shouting, teasing, worrying kids, grouped in twos and threes and fours around open lockers, milling in and out of rest rooms, jostling around the water fountain. The stairwells were slow-moving conveyor belts of humanity, going up and down, stopping, screaming, a moving picture painted with strokes of hair and patterned spandex, dull books and bright plastic, objects thrown and caught and dropped. The walls were hung with posters, exhortations to various teams taped to pale blue cinder-block walls.
    From somewhere in the tight-packed mass Lucas emerged.Not the person Zoey wanted to see at that particular moment.
    â€œHey, Zo,” he called. He grinned. “You’re an island of calm beauty in a sea of noisy mediocrity.”
    She smiled uncertainly. “You’re poetic this morning.”
    â€œWhy wouldn’t I be? I heard they’re killing last period to hold an assembly. No French today. Pas de français, chérie. ”
    Zoey glanced nervously toward the list. “Uh-huh. Do you happen to know what the assembly is for?”
    Lucas shrugged. “Probably the usual.” He counted on his fingers. “It’s either one, an antidrug lecture, which I don’t need, or two, an anti-booze lecture, which I also don’t need, or three, an anti-sex lecture, which you give me every couple of days.” He grinned to show he was just teasing. “Or else it’s some student-government-pep-spirit-we’re-better-than-everyone-else-so-let’s-cheer-some-crowd-of-jock-dorks kind of thing.”
    â€œPartly it’s a pep rally,” Zoey agreed. “It’s also to introduce the candidates for homecoming king and queen.”
    â€œThat would fall into the category of cheering some crowd of dorks,” Lucas said.
    Zoey winced.
    â€œOh, hell, I’m sorry, Zoey,” Lucas said quickly, coming to give her a hug. “Of course if you’re up for it, that’s totally different. You could never be a dork. I shouldn’t have said that. There’s nothing wrong with being more into the school thingthan I am. I hope you win. Really. That is it, isn’t it? I mean, you’re one of the candidates, right?”
    â€œYes, actually I am,” Zoey said. “But you know, it’s not like people nominate themselves. And anyway, to be on the list you have to have received a dozen votes.”
    â€œSee? At least a dozen people realize how great you are. Hell, I’m