Read Online Finding June by Shannen Crane Camp - Free Book Online

really,
honestly, didn’t mean to . . . attack you,” I finally said. This
made him laugh as he let go of me, somewhat reluctantly, I
thought.
    “Attack me?” he repeated with just a hint of
mischief in his smile. “Yeah, I’d say that’s a good way to describe
what just happened here."
    “You have lipstick all over your face, by the
way,” I said in embarrassment, bringing my hand up to my mouth,
partially to remove the lipstick from my own face, but mostly to
hide the blush that was rising in my cheeks. Joseph wiped at his
face, rubbing most of the red away except for a small trace right
around his lips. I quickly wiped it away with my thumb. He placed
his hand over mine for just a moment before letting it go.
    I stood in front of him, looking at the
ground and feeling slightly ashamed that I had pounced on Joseph
just because I’d been so stressed. It wasn’t his fault he happened
to be the innocent bystander of "June’s mental meltdown."
    “I really am sorry,” I said again. Joseph
opened his mouth to talk, but I quickly cut him off, wanting to
make sure he understood me entirely. “It’s just everything’s been
so crazy lately and I’ve been stressed about the show and even
about the skit. And I guess I was thinking if I just let go for a
minute I could maybe . . . get rid of some of the stress. But I
didn’t mean to attack you and I definitely don’t want you to think
I’m some crazy hormone-filled girl like Xani,” I said all in one
breath. Though I expected Joseph to look relieved by my revelation,
he just looked a bit disappointed to me.
    “Don’t worry about it,” he said somberly. I
couldn’t figure out exactly when we’d gone from being happy and
full of jokes right after our kiss, to being suddenly all somber
and depressed. “We did forget the last part of the skit though,” he
said with a halfhearted smile.
    “Well, tomorrow we’ll be much better,” I said
resolutely. “I promise. I won’t attack you again, all right?”
Joseph nodded, his pursed-lipped smile still in place.
    We didn’t talk about the kiss at break. Or in
Spanish. Or during lunch . . . well, the whole fifteen minutes I
was at lunch before Gran came to get me. As I left our spot, I gave
Joseph a little wave over my shoulder and smiled at him. He
returned the wave but his smile just looked sad. I hadn’t upset him that much by kissing him, had I? I asked Gran on the way to
the table read what she thought of the whole situation, needing
some input from someone I trusted.
    “Bliss, you’re a smart girl. How can you not
see this?” she asked in exasperation.
    “See what?” I replied, confusion and stress
clouding my mind.
    “Joseph likes you. He’s probably wanted you
to kiss him since you were five and now that it’s happened he’s
probably hurt that you tried to downplay it so much,” she
explained, sounding wise and sure . . . even though I knew she was
completely wrong.
    “First off, Joseph’s not a girl. He doesn’t
get his feelings hurt over things like that,” I told her
matter-of-factly. “And second, I know that because we’re such good
friends it seems like we like each other in that way, but we really
don’t. We’ve just always been really close.”
    “So you’re telling me you don’t feel anything
other than friendship toward that boy?” Gran asked skeptically. I
thought about it for a moment. I had definitely always treated our
relationship as a friendship. Did that really mean I didn’t have
feelings for Joseph? Or was I just constantly telling myself we
were just friends to make sure I didn’t spoil something I knew we had for something we might have? I decided to
go with the former.
    “That’s what I’m telling you,” I said at
last, making Gran shake her head in an "I give up" kind of way.
    We spent the rest of the drive to the
production office discussing what I should expect from this table
read today. The more we talked about it, the more nervous I became,
and soon all