Read Online Mayne Attraction: In The Spotlight by Ann Mauren - Free Book Online Page A

rider seemed more embarrassing to me now that I had
people watching. I wondered what they would think about that. Maybe
that I was grounded? No car, no friends, and no life…all summer.
Short of catching the library on fire, or engaging in grammatically
incorrect graffiti vandalism, I couldn’t imagine a universe where
Mom would ever be mad enough at me to shut down my whole summer
like that. Of course, giving off the false impression that I was
being punished because I’d been bad was exponentially cooler than
the truth of the matter: a case of terminal lameness.
    I really needed to get my license. I already
had a car. My grandpa’s Jeep Cherokee was parked in the third bay
of our garage. It had been sitting there patiently waiting for me
since wintertime. I had gone with him to the dealership to ‘help’
him pick it out the previous spring. He always joked about the Jeep
belonging to me and that he was just borrowing it until I got my
license. So I was shocked when my mom showed me the title. She had
found it among other neatly filed important documents while she was
going through his things after he died. The Jeep had been paid for
in cash, and was registered in my name. Apparently it was no
joke.
    Mom insisted on taking me school shopping;
an annual event that I was glad would be over after this year. We
began and ended at Old Navy. She wanted to hit every sale in the
mall but I assured her that a few new items were all I needed since
it didn’t appear I was growing anymore and my collection of new
school clothes from last year were still perfectly good. Appealing
to her practical side always yielded favorable results, especially
when money was on the line.
    I enjoyed my last few days of sleeping in
and tried to prepare my mind for the new environment ahead of me.
This was my second year at this school, so at least I would know my
way around. It was large though, with about two thousand students.
On the first day of school the traffic out front was a nightmare.
The buses were able to go around into a separate buses only
entrance. If I had driven, and hadn’t shown up an hour early, I
would have been late. So my transportation situation wasn’t
completely without its benefits.
    I could not have imagined the reversal that
awaited me in regards to mobility…and society.
     
     

Chapter 9 –
Goth

    I was inordinately pleased with myself. I
had devised a plan to flush out a number of them—perhaps all of
them—in the same week. I’d be taking a big risk, of course. As a
result of this little series of maneuvers I was certain that
security would become far tighter, and that it would be
exponentially more difficult to pull something of this nature off
in the future, if it were to become necessary, that is.
    I had wrestled with myself about the
advisability of moving forward with my plans when there wasn’t an
emergency or any real reason to do it, other than to satisfy my
curiosity and my desire to mess with them…just a little.
    Because I was convinced that there was a
fairly large team, which must be organized into shifts, I thought
it would be most advantageous to perpetrate a double or even a
triple header: back to back incidents to expose the various
personnel assigned to my detail over the course of several
consecutive days. Of paramount importance, though, was the
necessity to insure that my actions did not appear to be the result
of pre-meditation or planning of any sort. They had to think the
breaches were unrelated, and completely their fault. It would ruin
everything for all of us if they knew the fault was mine.
    My plan had taken form slowly over the
course of several weeks as I became acquainted with the most
ridiculous looking person I had ever known in real life. Her name
was Samantha Sun. She was into the Goth look: a style that suggests
horror and mystery. To some it is simply a mode of fashion, to
others an entire lifestyle. Either way, a gothic look involves very
black clothing and very white