Read Online Only Girls Allowed by Debra Moffitt - Free Book Online Page B

on our computers and see all the questions stacking up. Girls were already complaining: “Where are you?” and “Hello? Is anyone home in there?”
    Piper and Kate said they were going to spend their study halls in the library.
    â€œMe too,” Bet said, quickly adding that she needed to find a spot to study alone.
    I said (lied) that I had found an empty classroom in the art and music wing and that I too wanted to be alone to do those geometry proofs. I watched the three of them walk toward the library together and I prepared to spring into action.
    My head felt like a balloon filled with love, fog, and electricity. I held my hand out and saw that it was shaking a little. Fortunately, Forrest was easy to capture. He was at his locker, right next to mine, just before study hall started. He often spent his study halls in the gym working out. No one would miss him, I figured. When the hall crowds thinned, I leaned over to Forrest and spoke my first scripted line: “I can
show
you now.”
    Lesson number one to all you girls out there who really like a boy: Don’t count on him remembering everything you ever said to him. You may think you have inside jokes and your own secret code, but you probably don’t.
    Forrest just looked startled and said, “What?” And when I said it again—“I can show you now”—he said, “What?” again. Maybe I should have started with something like hi.
    Anyway, this led to me doing a lot of overexplaining, burbling on about our conversation on the bus and
Gotcha!
and how I said I would
show
him someday and now I was ready to
show
him. Finally, I saw a glimmer of recognition sweep across his face. I looked over my right and left shoulders, then motioned to the inside of my locker.
    â€œWhat?” he said, but he tipped his head in my direction and looked in.
    He squinted as if maybe something was wrong with his vision and took a step back.
    â€œWhat’s in
there
?” he whispered.
    I leaned into my locker and worked the combination dial. The combination hadn’t changed since the site had been shut down.
    â€œThat’s what I want to show you,” I said as I swung open the pink door. “C’mon.”
    I went in, and once he saw me standing in there, he followed. He even pulled my locker door closed behind him.
    In my script, I was the one who closed the locker door, but no matter. I was having trouble sticking to my script anyway. It wasn’t that Forrest said anything so different from what I had guessed he would say. But once we were in the Pink Locker Society offices, he said nothing at all.
    Standing there, he looked a little afraid. I think he was mad at me. Later, I had to feel sorry for him. On my first trip into the PLS headquarters, at least I had a little warning and time to get mentally prepared. Forrest just got pulled in, kidnapped almost. His face started to soften after I explained where we were and what this was all about.
    â€œI’m the Pink Locker Society. I mean, I’m
in
the Pink Locker Society. This is our office. You know what the PLS is, right?”
    Now Forrest gave me a look of disbelief, but then I pulled him toward the loft to show him the computers. Then I whipsawed back to kitchen area.
    â€œUsually, there are snacks,” I said as I grabbed a box of crackers.
    â€œWant some?”
    â€œNo,” Forrest said—his first word.
    â€œWell, maybe if I had mixed-fruit jelly for the crackers?”
    OK, girls. Have you heard me loud and clear? Assume no inside jokes or secret code. After that fruit-jelly remark, he looked at me as if I were wearing my underwear as a hat. Zero recognition. Maybe he had moved on to something more exotic in the jelly department.
    I turned and pulled him back up to the loft, where I continued to talk too fast and move too fast. Forrest seemed to wake up when I turned on the computer up in the loft and went to the Web site. Edith had