Read Online Driver's Ed by Caroline B. Cooney - Free Book Online Page B

the Marlands. They were so obvious. What you saw was what you got. You could see Mrs. Marland across a gym and know that her first name was Imogene and she was receptionist in a pediatric practice. You could listen to Mr. Marland and know that he would always believe in his daughter’s abilities, whether she had any or not.
    Plus, whenever you watched the Marlands, you were always glad you had different parents.
    Remy was fouled. One and one.
    Morgan prayed for her. Let her make them both!
    She sank the first one.
    In games you could always yell for the player. So Morgan was free to yell, and he yelled, “Way to go, Remy!”
    She bounced the ball four times, trying to drain off tension.
    I’ll ask her out after the game, he thought. I’ll tell her I was an idiot for not talking to her during class.
    He knew he would do neither one.
    Okay, then, I’ll call her tonight, he thought.
    That was far enough off that he could believe he might really do it.
    *  *  *
    M organ was not in the gym when Remy and her team got out of the locker room. Morgan was not at Pizza Hut to celebrate the JV victory. Morgan had left no messages with Lark. And that night, though Remy waited and circled and prayed, the phone did not ring.
    What was the point in having a God if he did not make the phone ring when you wanted it to?
    Friday night, and the phone was not ringing. She had a sick glance down the hallways of her life; a horror that all of her Friday nights would be phoneless.
    No, God, she said forcefully. Anything but that.
    Saturday would come and go, filled with the chores of a working family: groceries, laundry, vacuuming, a rented movie to fill the evening.
    Sunday would arrive and here she was, irked with God. Why could the Marlands never skip church like normal people?
    When she was little, Remy loved church.
    It was so mysterious. Why had everybody come? Why were they dressed up? Why did they serve such strange food? Why did you pay for this, hiding your money in little white envelopes?
    By her teens, however, Remy detested church. It was not mysterious. It was dumb. Everybody was a hypocrite. There was no point and when she had children of her own she would not subject them to this. Her kids would play on soccer teams with Sunday-morning games. So there.
    Thinking of Mrs. Willit’s awful sermons made her think of Mr. Willit, nominating Morgan for normalcy.
    If Morgan were normal, she thought, he would have stayed after the game and asked me out.
    â€œLet’s quit going to church,” Remy said to her brother. “Will you quit with me?”
    Mac could not stand being on his sister’s side, so even if he detested church ninety times more than Remy, which he did, he couldn’t agree with her. “Of course not,” he said. “Do you think I want to hurt Mom?” He continued to drink out of the orange juice carton, letting it dribble down his chin and spill on the floor where Remy would step in it.
    She was sick of this. She wanted to make a dent in the world. If Morgan Campbell wouldn’t call, something else would have to happen.
    L ike a watchman in a city of old, Morgan’s mother called out, “Eleven o’clock approaching!” In some families the warning meant bedtime. In Morgan Campbell’s it meant the late news.
    Rafe and Nance Campbell and their son and daughter gathered before the televisions.
    Dad channel-grazed, remoting at high speed from station to station. Stalking lions on PBS blended into diamond rings on Home Shopper, evaporating into wrestling matches on ESPN, only to dissolve into rock stars on MTV.
    â€œThis is the kind of dangerous light pattern that sets off convulsions in small children, Daddy,” said Starr.
    Dad grinned and stopped. He left the sound on for the local ABC news affiliate, their usual favorite.
    Morgan liked the late-night commentators. He knew them as well as any family friend.
    Anne was slender, graceful, and