Read Online Geek High by Piper Banks - Free Book Online Page B

far too young.”
    â€œNo, she isn’t. I had my nose done when I was sixteen,” Peyton argued.
    Wait…Peyton had a nose job? I stared at her nose, which had always seemed a bit too pointy, and had a tendency to flare when she was angry. I wondered what it had looked like before, and had a sudden vivid image of Peyton with a hooked, wart-covered witch’s nose. I quickly took a sip of Coke to cover my snort of laughter.
    â€œWell, Miranda is too young,” my father said firmly. “Besides, her mother would never go along with the idea.”
    Hmph, I thought. Why should Sadie have any say? I think there should be a law that when a parent deserts her offspring to go live in Europe, she immediately surrenders any right to have input in decisions involving minor cosmetic procedures.
    â€œActually, I think I might like a nose job,” I said. A bit too loudly. Which wouldn’t have been a big deal…except for the fact that Emmett Dutch had chosen that exact moment to appear at our table, standing just behind me.
    â€œHey, Miranda,” he said.
    I spun around and stared up at Emmett. I had no idea that he actually knew my name. Discovering this delicious nugget of information was almost worth the mortification of him hearing my announcement that I wanted to have a nose job. Almost…but not quite. Because surely now every time Emmett saw me, all he’d be able to think about was my freakishly large nose. It’s true. Finn said that whenever he tells someone he was born with a cleft palate, from then on they always stare at the surgical scar just over his mouth, as though trying to imagine what the birth defect must have looked like. So now Finn just tells everyone that the scar was caused by a freak fly-fishing accident.
    I suddenly realized that Emmett was waiting for me to say something.
    â€œOh. Um. Hi,” I gabbled nervously. “You know my name?”
    Oh, no. Please tell me I didn’t just say that out loud, I thought miserably.
    â€œI’m here with my parents,” Emmett said, nodding over toward his mother and father’s table. They were watching us with friendly interest, and so I waved feebly at them.
    â€œOh…cool,” I said. An awkward pause followed, during which I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
    â€œMiranda, aren’t you going to introduce us to your friend?” Peyton asked in her most fakey-nice tone. It was how she used to talk to me back when she and my dad were first dating, and she felt it was important to pretend to like me…a pretense she dropped as soon as they got married.
    â€œOh! Right. Sorry. This is, um, Emmett. And this is my dad, and my stepmother, Peyton, and that’s Hannah,” I said, pointing to each in turn.
    â€œHi,” Emmett said, looking right at Hannah.
    â€œHey,” Hannah said. She tipped her head coyly to one side and began to wrap a sleek tendril of platinum blond hair around one finger.
    Wait…why was Hannah looking at Emmett that way? Almost as if she were interested in… Oh, no. No no no no no no no.
    â€œWhere do you go to school?” Emmett asked, still not taking his eyes off of Hannah.
    â€œOrange Cove High,” Hannah said. She smiled, flashing her perfect white teeth. “Do you go to Miranda’s school?”
    â€œYeah. Notting Hill,” Emmett said, nodding.
    â€œThat is so cool,” Hannah said. “You must be really smart.”
    I couldn’t help rolling my eyes at this. Hannah had never once let the subject of Geek High pass without making a comment about how only dorks and freaks go there.
    But neither my dad nor Payton caught my eye roll. They were too busy beaming up at Emmett. Who, in turn, was beaming down at Hannah.
    Oh, no no no no no no no!
    But, I realized, my stomach sinking, there wasn’t a chance that Emmett would ever look at Hannah and me standing side by side and choose me. She looked like she’d