Read Online The Mosts by Melissa Senate - Free Book Online Page B

told me I was earning fifty bucks an hour. Not bad.
    In gym, Elinor missed three easy volleyball shots and then ended up practically breaking her nose while diving onto her stomach to hit the ball. She still missed it, and then it landed on her back.
    “God, could you be more of a total dork?” someone said to her, and everyone in hearing distance laughed.
    Except me. Elinor looked like she was about to burst into tears. The girl next to Elinor helped her up, but Elinor’s knee was so bruised she was excused from the rest of class.
    As she hobbled away, there were giggled whispers of “What a loser.”
    I felt bad for her. I’d never had to deal with anything like that before I became part of the popular crowd. I was just ignored—not picked on. And once I became popular, I was so focused on my friends that I never paid much attention to anyone else.
    Like Elinor.
    I just waltzed down the halls with Caro, Fergie, Annie, and Selena, oblivious to anyone else.
    But really … why was I popular? Was it just because I was Thom Geller’s girlfriend? Or was it because I intimidated everyone the way my friends did? If I came to school with no makeup, flat hair, and ugly clothes, would I suddenly not be me anymore?
    Caro would say it was Elinor’s fault for being such a total loser in the first place. That her dorkiness had everything to do with her. But if no one picked on her, she wouldn’t be a loser. She’d just be Elinor, being herself. Why couldn’t that be okay?
    On the ride home from school, I posed that very question to Caro and Fergie.
    “Omigod, Madeline, you are boring me to death,” Caro said, rolling her eyes and glancing out the window.
    “It is kind of boring, Madeline,” Fergie added as she scrolled through her messages. “I mean, there is nothing to debate. It is what it is.” She tossed her phone into her bag. “I love that expression, don’t you?”
    It is what it is .
    But it didn’t have to be.

Chapter 8
    O n Saturday, my mom gave me a ride to Elinor’s house. “Honey, did you speak to your dad about the wedding?” she asked. “Is he planning to book your and Sabrina’s flight?”
    “Actually he said he couldn’t afford the tickets,” I told her. Sabrina hadn’t said I couldn’t tell the truth, just that I shouldn’t ask for my mom to pay my way.
    Please offer, please offer, please offer , I prayed. Then I could cancel this …  thing with the interns and spend the rest of the month dreaming of California, dreaming of Thom.
    The night before, he’d called and we’d talked for an entire hour about his life, my life. And how much we missed each other. How much he missed the perfume I always wore. After we hung up, I just lay on my bed and closed my eyes and saw nothing but Thom. Once again, everything was forgotten. Caro’s beyotchiness. The itty-bitty crush I was developing on Sam—which clearly couldn’t be real. And the interns. I really wanted to forget them.
    “I wish I could swing it,” my mom said, reaching over to smooth my hair. “But everything has gone up this year. We’re barely going to break even.”
    Now I felt like the brat my sister always accused me of being. My mom and Mac were so good to me. They let me be me, even though that meant I hated everything about their lives and their dream—the farm. They never teased me about thinking I was Ms. Sophisticated, the way Sabrina did. I had to say, I was pretty lucky when it came to my mom and my stepfather. “That’s okay, Mom,” I said, my heart twisting. “I actually got a job. A weird job, but a job. A few of the interns have hired me to give them advice on how to be more popular and make themselves over. Like what I learned in Rome.”
    She glanced at me. “They’re paying you?”
    “It was their idea,” I said quickly. “If I didn’t need the money for the ticket, I wouldn’t have said yes.”
    “Still, Madeline, that’s—”
    “Mom, the way they dress and act at the farm is how they dress