Read Online Butter by Erin Jade Lange - Free Book Online Page B

mean to cut.”
    â€œGo ahead.”
    â€œNo, I’m sorry.”
    â€œIt’s no big de—”
    â€œNo, really.” The girl put her hand on my arm. “I’m sorry.”
    Geez! All day it had been like this. First, the kid who insisted on helping me gather my books and papers when they tumbled out of my locker, then the boy in algebra who jumped in to answer for me when I fumbled a question about linear equations, and now this girl, insisting I use the soda machine ahead of her. Maybe Anna was right. Maybe everyone at school
was
reading the most likely list.
    I shook off the girl’s hand and tossed my quarters down the soda machine’s slot. “It was a joke,” I mumbled.
    One Mountain Dew later, I was parked at my cafeteria table, unloading my lunch. Hunger had finally caught up to me, and I didn’t care who was watching as I inhaled the usual cold leftovers. I half expected some sort of follow-up confrontation with Jeremy or Anna, but that corner of the cafeteria seemed to be ignoring me more than ever. I was invisible again.
    Only once did one of them look my way. The mouthy kid,Trent, caught my eye for a split second as I glanced up between bites of roast beef sandwich. I looked away quickly, so maybe I imagined it, but I could have sworn he gave me a thumbs-up. I did a double take, but when I looked back, he was talking to the crowd at his table.
    I made it all the way to sixth period computer lab without another incident, and I’d almost convinced myself no one had really seen the site. I just had to be sure.
    I parked at my favorite computer, under the lab’s tiny window. It was the only spot where the computer screen wasn’t visible by the teacher or any other student. I’m no computer whiz, but this lab was desperately easy. Most of us in the class knew more about computers by the time we got to junior high than our teacher did when he graduated college, so everyone always raced to finish the day’s assignment and get in some Internet time. It was just tricky not to get busted cruising online. That’s why the seat under the window was the best.
    I breezed through the lab, not caring whether I botched the HTML code, and hurried to the World Wide Web. I started with the most likely list. The blogger had yet to post anything new, so the list remained the hot topic. I scrolled through hundreds of comments before I saw my own:
    Want to watch a train wreck?
    Log on to ButtersLastMeal.com and see if you can keep down your lunch.
    A few comments later, I saw this:
    Holy crap! Follow the link a few posts up by “Butter.” Dude is crazy!!!
    Followed by this:
    Is that for real?
    And this:
    It’s legit. Check it out. I just posted the link on my site too. Seriously messed up … and awesome!!
    After that, the comments just dropped off a cliff, like suddenly everyone had lost interest in this site. They’d been distracted by the next Web craze. My heart raced.
    My fingers were shaking as I typed in the address to my own site, still less than twenty-four hours old. At first glance, my page looked no different from the night before. It was like any virgin blog, with one lonely entry followed by miles of blank space. But something caught my eye and caused my throat to close up—a tiny number, below my post and off to the right. “Twenty-seven comments.”
    Twenty-seven? Just since last night?
    Blood filled my ears, drowning out the
click-clack
of keyboards around me. The hammering in my chest picked up pace, and I had to remind myself to take a deep breath. Doc Bean was always telling me to “take care of the ticker.” A guy my size couldn’t afford to let his heartbeat get out of control. Imustered up patience I didn’t know I was capable of and waited for the drumming of my heart to slow before clicking open the comments page as calmly as I could.
    The first few posts were unsurprising—the anticipated
what the