Read Online How to Take the Ex Out of Ex-Boyfriend by Janette Rallison - Free Book Online

cleanup, and I’d disobeyed her and gone off to the mall.
    â€œDon’t think there won’t be consequences for running off with your boyfriend after I told you that you couldn’t,” she yelled. “It will be a long, long time before you go out with Jesse again!”
    See, it pays off to keep your stepmother uninformed about your love life. As far as the punishments she could have dished out, that one wasn’t too bad.
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    Over the next few days I immersed myself in the election. Technically, we couldn’t start campaigning until after we’d gathered enough signatures to put our candidate’s name on the ballot. The office wouldn’t hand out petitions until next Monday, but that didn’t stop Wilson from planning things anyway. I heard through the grapevine—which generally meant Daphne—that Wilson had bought his popularity cohorts some shirts which read “WILLsonPOWER.” They were all going to wear them during the campaign. He’d also ordered buttons and pencils with this logo.
    All this information panicked me, because I didn’t know where or how to make up buttons or any of the other stuff. In my free time I worked on posters, so we’d have a few ready. I also tried to think of a campaign jingle—which you’d think Dante would appreciate, but instead he kept saying, “Don’t you dare put my name into something that sounds like a laundry commercial.”
    Stephen and Brandon, two of Dante’s rebel friends who only went to school when it didn’t interfere with their other plans, agreed to help with the campaign. They came up with the slogan “Let’s make election day Dante’s Inferno.” Which if you ask me (and obviously no one did even though I was supposed to be the campaign manager) didn’t make any sense. Dante’s Inferno ? That was some medieval book describing the levels of hell, which hopefully would have very little to do with our school elections. I vetoed the idea, but Stephen and Brandon went off and made posters with that slogan on it anyway.
    It’s hard to be in charge of rebellious people, because they don’t take direction well.
    During school I spoke to everyone I could, trying to encourage them to join Team Dante. This was excruciatingly hard for me. Since the biology room break-in, I always worry that anyone who isn’t my friend is telling Giovanna-kleptomaniac jokes behind my back. And yes, there are several.
    â€œKnock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Giovanna, so you’d better hide your valuables.”
    And “What did Giovanna win when she entered a beauty pageant?” “Miss Demeanor.” I’m pretty sure Bridget came up with that one.
    Anyway, it was hard for me to go up to people and strike up conversations, but I did. Every time I talked to a cute guy, I had the vague hope that Jesse would round the corner, see me talking to some studly rival, and be wounded by jealousy. This never happened, although every time I rounded a corner I saw Bridget glued to his side.
    You’d think with all the guys I talked to, one or two of them might have shown some interest in the newly single me. I mean, before I went out with Jesse, guys occasionally flirted with me, but not anymore. It was totally depressing.
    During lunch on Thursday I brought up this subject with Daphne. “Is there something wrong with me?” I asked as I sat down at our table. I’d just been through the lunch line, where despite a lot of smiling on my part, the guys in line had shown as much interest in me as they might to a nun in full habit. “It’s the biology break-in, isn’t it? Nobody wants to take a criminal to prom.”
    Daphne let out a sigh and twirled the end of her straw in her mouth as though unsure whether to tell me a secret or not. “Actually, Jesse told all the guys he knows that they’d better not ask you