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

haven’t ripped off any DVDs. My backpack, I mean. Even though I was the store’s token goody-goody, everyone’s bag gets searched before they leave. Even mine. It’s the Potomac Video way.
    Although certain of its employees are trying to change that.
    â€œI love the black,” Dauntra said. “It makes your face look thinner.”
    â€œI don’t know if thin-faced was the look I was going for,” I said. “But thanks.”
    â€œYou know what I mean.” Dauntra, whose hair is two-toned, Midnight Ebony and Pink Flamingo, fiddled with her eyebrow ring. “What did your parents say? Did they lose it?”
    â€œNot really,” I said, ducking back behind the counter. “They barely noticed, actually.”
    Dauntra made a disgusted noise.
    â€œGod, what are you going to have to do to get their attention, anyway?” she wanted to know. “Have a baby at the prom?”
    â€œUm,” I said, choking a little on the diet Dr Pepper I’d bought at the convenience mart next door before my shift. Because, you know, considering recent events, my having a baby at the prom isn’t totally out of the realm of the possible. “Yeah. Ha. That would probably do it, all right. But, you know, there’s something to be said for maintaining a low profile. Right now they’re all over Lucy, on account of her SAT scores.”
    Dauntra’s look of disgust deepened. “When are people going to get that that stupid test doesn’t mean anything? I mean, what does it measure? How well you paid attention in class the past decade of your life? Please. Like that can tell a college admissions office anything about how well you’re going to do for the next four years while you’re at their school.”
    Dauntra, whose parents kicked her out of the house one night after she turned sixteen and got an eyebrow ring (and a twenty-year-old boyfriend), is currently studying graphic design at a community college. She’d dumped the boyfriend, but kept the eyebrow ring, and opted out of the whole SAT trap by refusing to take them, or to enroll in a school that required them. Dauntra has a lot of opinions like that. I actually think that she and Lucy’s boyfriend, Jack, have a lot in common that way.
    â€œSo what’d the ’rents do?” Dauntra wanted to know. “About your sister?”
    â€œOh,” I said. “They’re making her get a tutor. And cut back on the cheerleading to make time for it. The tutoring, I mean.”
    â€œTypical,” Dauntra said. “I mean, them playing into the whole sick fallacy that those scores mean anything. Although if it means your sister spends less time in a miniskirt, undermining the feminist cause, I guess it’s a good thing.”
    â€œTotally,” I said.
    I thought about asking Dauntra what she thought I should do about David and the whole Thanksgiving thing. I mean, she is more experienced than I am—probably more than Lucy, too. I figured the advice from a woman of the world like Dauntra might be really valuable, not to mention insightful.
    Only I couldn’t really figure out how to bring it up, you know? Like, was I just supposed to go, “Hey, Dauntra. My boyfriend asked me to spend Thanksgiving with him at Camp David, and you know what that means. Should I say yes or no?”
    Somehow, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. So instead, I asked her, conversationally, “So, how’s the battle of the backpack going?”
    Dauntra glanced darkly in Stan’s direction. “Stalemate,” she said. “He said if I didn’t like it, I could go work at McDonald’s.”
    Dauntra’s convinced that the video store’s policy of having a manager go through employee backpacks before allowing them to leave after their shift is unconstitutional—even though I’d asked my mom about it, and she’d said, technically, it wasn’t.