Read Online Ready or Not by Meg Cabot - Free Book Online

mom and dad had actually said yes to my spending the weekend with him at Camp David.
    Which I was still sort of mad about. Their saying yes, I mean. It was so obvious that they’d only said yes because they’d been distracted by Lucy and her SAT score situation. I mean, God forbid Mom and Dad should pay attention to me for a change. As usual, the middle child was getting the short end of the stick, attention-wise, in the Madison household.
    Although I guess I couldn’t totally blame Lucy for their saying yes. The fact is, my parents have this perception that I’m the Good Kid. You know, the one who, yeah, might try to dye her hair black, but who ultimately is going to throw herself on an assassin to save the president. Nobody worries too much about a kid like that. A kid like that would never do something as reprehensible as sleep with her boyfriend over Thanksgiving weekend.
    It would so serve my parents right if I became an unwed teen mother.
    Still, I wasn’t about to mention any of this to Catherine. She has enough to deal with, what with her mom not letting her wear pants to school—seriously, she has to wear below-the-knee skirts, even in P.E.—and the mockery this brings with it. I’m not about to add to Catherine’s troubles the fact that her best friend is considering losing the big V.
    Besides, it isn’t anybody’s business, really. Anybody’s but my own.
    Â 
    â€œWhoa,” Dauntra said, when I burst through the door to Potomac Video with just a minute to spare before my after-school shift started. “You did it!”
    I didn’t know what she was talking about at first. I thought she meant that I’d decided to have sex with my boyfriend, and wondered how she’d known. Especially since I hadn’t decided any such thing. Yet.
    Then I remembered my hair.
    â€œYeah,” I said. I have to admit, her reaction—which was actually admiring—made all the What did you do to your hair? ’s I’d gotten in school today totally worth it. Around Potomac Video—just like around my own home—I am perceived as somewhat of a goody-goody. I mean, I’m the girl who saved the president, the girl who doesn’t need that $6.75 an hour to pay for childcare or whatever. I’m considered something of a freak around there.
    Until, of course, I dyed my hair. Now, I was cool.
    I hoped.
    Because the clerks at Potomac Video? They’re way cool.
    Especially Dauntra, with whom, along with Stan, the night manager, I work on Friday nights. Her motto (taped to her employee locker): Question authority . Her favorite movie :A Clockwork Orange . Her political party: not the same as David’s dad. In fact, one of the first things she ever asked me was, “Has it ever occurred to you that if you had just let him get shot, you might have spared us all a lot of grief?”
    And while this might be true, I don’t think even Dauntra could have stood there and just watched someone point a gun at someone else, no matter how different her political views were from that person’s. Especially, as I’d pointed out to her, considering the fact that, much as people might dislike the president—and judging from the latest polls, people disliked him very, very much—I knew someone who loved him a lot. Namely his son, my boyfriend, David. No matter how much he might disagree with some of the things his dad has done during his administration, David’s affection for his father never wavered.
    And for that reason—not to mention the fact that, really, I’d had no choice in the matter. I hadn’t so much acted that day as reacted —I was glad I’d done what I had.
    â€œNow that ,” Dauntra said with approval, nodding at my hair, “is what I’m talking about.”
    â€œYou like it?” I threw my backpack into my employee locker. Later, before I leave, Stan will go through it, to make sure I