Read Online The Sweetest Thing by J. Minter - Free Book Online

tank and flipped her hair over her shoulder.
    â€œYeah, and thanks for all your advice, Flan. I think it will really help,” Meredith added. “We’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
    I stepped back and looked at them. They looked at me with innocent smiles on their faces as they linked arms.
    â€œWant to take the subway uptown?” Meredith asked Judith.
    â€œSounds like a plan,” Judith replied with a nod.
    â€œAll right … ’bye, then,” I told them as I turned to leave.
    But when I looked back, they had already dropped each other’s arms.

CHAPTER 9
THE CUTEST THING IN BIO CLASS … AND NO, I DON’T MEAN ADAM
    I woke up the next morning with a huge knot in my stomach. I wondered at first if it was just the aftereffects of the somewhat unappetizing version of cheese soufflé Feb had served for dinner the night before. But as I put on my charcoal gray Miu Miu blazer with the colorful polka-dotted lining, I realized it wasn’t the cheese that was making me feel like I had a miniature Noodles rolling around in my stomach. It was my quarterback-loving friends.
    I was so worried and distracted that on my walk to school I tripped over the leash of a shih tzu on the corner of Spring and Varick Streets, and then almost walked out in front of an M20 bus speeding downtown. Once I got to school, another thing added to my stress about Judith and Meredith: the source of discord himself, Adam. Suddenly it seemed like he was popping up everywhere: near the third-floor drinkingfountain, in the cafeteria, by the fifth-floor escalator. It wasn’t like I thought he was following me—that would have been pretty conceited—but then I began to get a little worried that
he
might think
I
was following him. Which I wasn’t, obviously. But just in case, I started trying to avoid him, which of course didn’t work, because I didn’t know which way he’d be walking, and after English, I took an ill-fated detour around the gym only to practically knock him over by the second-floor bathrooms and drop all my books like a royal klutz.
    â€œOh, wow, I’m so sorry!” I could feel my face turning red as he rubbed his arm where I’d bumped into him.
    â€œDon’t worry about it.” He picked up my geometry textbook and handed it to me. He was wearing a plain gray fitted T-shirt, and I noticed that his hair was a little mussed, like he’d forgotten to comb it or something. “You know, we need a new defensive lineman for the team. You interested?”
    â€œThanks, but no,” I said, grabbing the book from him. “I’ll see you in bio, I guess.”
    I quickly scurried off around the corner, feeling both embarrassed and irrationally annoyed. It was like he knew about the No Adam Rule and was secretly trying to thwart it at every turn. As glad as Iwas not to be at Mallard Day anymore, I realized my life had been a little less complicated when there were no boys around.
    I did manage to shake a little bit of Adam-water out of my ears during math class, though. I concentrated on isosceles triangles instead of
love
triangles, and on Bennett and the bouquet of lemon yellow lilies he’d given me instead of the flowery way Meredith and Judith talked about Adam. But bio was right after math, and I knew that there would be no escaping Adam and his comfy-sweater-sea-green eyes there.
    Apparently there would be no escaping my Adam-obsessed friends, either, because waiting right outside my biology class was a freshly lip-glossed Judith.
    â€œFlan! There you are!” she exclaimed, rushing over to hug me like it had been years, rather than hours, since we’d last seen each other. When she let go, she craned her neck to look past me into the classroom.
    I shifted my schoolbag on my arm. “Judith, isn’t your history class on the fourth floor? Won’t you be late?”
    â€œUh, yeah,” she said absently, her eyes darting