Thirteen Plus One by Lauren Myracle Read Free Book Online

to take a good, hard look at myself. Unfortunately.
     
    On Thursday night, I decided it was time to take action regarding the sorry state of my love life. It might be scary, but so what? Do something scary, that was one of the things on my list, right?
    To give myself a jump start, I marched downstairs and asked Dad what he thought about wimpy girls who sat in their rooms all weekend and just, like, read books.
    “Good books or bad books?” he said, twisting to see me from his lazy-bum sprawl on the couch.
    I perched on the back of the couch. Mom hated when I did this; she thought it smushed the pillows into deformed lumps that could never be replumped. But Dad didn’t care.
    “Good books,” I said. “But still. Is that any life for a fourteen-year-old girl?”
    “If the girl’s as gorgeous as you are? Definitely.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Then let’s say bad books. Bad books with bad grammar . You don’t want me reading books like that all weekend, do you?”
    Dad lifted the remote and muted Phineas and Ferb , which he claimed only to watch for Ty’s sake. He claimed it was for daddy-son bonding time. But this wasn’t the first time I’d caught him watching it on his own.
    He put the remote on his chest. “Hmmm. So you’re saying you could lock yourself in your room and read grammatically incorrect books”—he squinted one eye—“or you could go out into the big bad world like Little Red Riding Hood, who got eaten by a wolf?”
    “She did not!”
    “I like the locking-yourself-in-your-room option. Till you’re twenty-one.” He reached up and shook my knee. “I’m proud of you, Winnie. I think you’re making an excellent choice.”
    “Ha ha.”
    He pointed the remote at the TV. “Want to watch Phineas and Ferb with me?”
    “No. And Dad. ” I slid down the back of the sofa, squishing the cushion to get to him. I pushed the remote back down so that he had to look at me. “Do you really want me being a dried-up spinster who has zero fun and lives a life of misery?”
    He made his funny-Dad hopeful expression, much like the one he used when Mom said, “Joel, you’re not planning on eating that entire can of Pringles, are you?”
    “Da-a-ad,” I said.
    “Princess, what I want is for you to be happy,” he said. He hardly ever called me “princess,” thank goodness, as it was horribly embarrassing. But secretly, I liked it when he did.
    “Okay, good,” I told him. “But you should know: It’s going to mean leaving my room.”
    His sigh was loud and long.
    “But c‘mon. You don’t really want a wimpy daughter.”
    “I do , however, want a safe daughter,” he said.
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He put his arm around me, and I soaked in the comfort of his hug for a few seconds. Then I pushed myself up and kissed his forehead. “Thanks for the chat, Dad. You’re the best.”
    Upstairs, before I lost my I-am-confident-and-strong feeling, I called Lars.
    Ring, ring, went my phone. Ring ring ring.
    “Hey, Win,” he said. “What’s up?”
    “Not much. What’s up with you?”
    “Ah, you know. Thinking about homework. Not doing homework. Considering chucking homework out of window.”
    “Blech,” I said, giggling. “Hate homework.” I tried to stay easygoing. “So are we going to do something this weekend? I feel like we haven’t done anything in forever.”
    “Um, sure,” Lars said.
    Okay, good start , I thought. “So, what do you want to do?”
    “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”
    I felt my easygoing-ness start to slip away. I’d been proactive, and now it was his turn. Only he didn’t say anything. Just sat there like a lump, waiting for me to do all the work.
    I sighed. “Well, tomorrow night I’m hanging with the girls, so we can’t do anything then.”
    “More movies about how guys suck?” he said. He’d heard all about Black Widow from Cinnamon. First he thought it was funny. Later, not so much.
    “Possibly,” I said, then immediately regretted it. I sat