Read Online Untethered by Katie Hayoz - Free Book Online

He stops when his eyes are back on Cassie. “It’d be great if you came.” He ignores the collective gasp and walks away. He doesn’t look back.
    A group invitation. No chance of rejection there.
    “Cool! An invitation to Bryce Hensley’s! Doesn’t he live on Lake Drive? I think his dad is some big-shot at Johnson’s Wax or In-Sinkerator, or maybe he’s a doctor. He’s loaded anyways. And they shot that movie at his house ... the one with the baseball players! How cool is that?” Sarah studies the sheet of paper with a rough map drawn in blue ink like she’s going to be tested on it. She and Michelle are like me and Cass ... inbetweeners, I guess: not geeks, not jocks, not Goths, not trash, not ... well, just not anything, really. All of us at the table know that it only takes a few more invitations and some greetings in the hallways by the cool people to be bumped up to semi-popular. We will never actually say it matters to us to be popular. Not out loud. But it does. Just more to some than to others; Cassie, for example, doesn’t seem to care.
    “I don’t know if I’ll go.” Cassie takes the map from Sarah and tugs at a long strand of hair that has come loose from the mass twisted into a barrette at her temple.
    “You have to go. He was, like, talking directly to you.” Michelle’s blonde curls bounce as she bobs her head.
    Cassie blushes again, and I feel my heart rate kick up.
    “Whatever,” Cassie says. “I bet Ashley and Rhea and Tori and all those biaches will be there.”
    “Think they’d let us breathe the same air they do?” Michelle giggles, only half-joking.
    “But Bryce Hensley,” Sarah argues. “He lives in one of the biggest houses in Racine. The movie, remember? Don’t you even want to see it? I do.”
    “Me, too,” says Michelle.
    Cassie shrugs.
    My palms start to sweat. I want to go. Not to see Bryce’s house, not to be with the popular crowd, but to spend an evening close to Kevin – to maybe, maybe get a chance to really talk to him and not just say, “Hi.” I know it’s stupid. I know there’s no way he even cares. And I know it’s crazy how much I do care.
    But I do.
    Sam’s quiet. He’s looking down at the table. By now he should have made friends, should have been sitting with them at lunch, but he hasn’t. The idea of a party terrifies him.
    “Can you get your parents’ car tonight?” I ask Cass. When she nods, I say, “Then we’re going. No question about it.”
    Sam whips his head up. “But we’re supposed to stay at Dad’s tonight.”
    “We’ll get out of it.”
    “We can’t get out of it.” Sam’s right. I don’t feel like reliving Dad carrying me out of the house again.
    “Oh, please,” Michelle says, dipping a chicken finger into the pool of mayonnaise on her plate. “My parents divorced when I was nine and all you need to do to get anything from either of them is lay on the guilt. Stuck in on a Friday night? It’s ruining your life. And whose fault is it? Your parents’.”
    Sam looks uncomfortable, but I say I’ll try.
    The bell rings. Michelle hastily copies the directions to Bryce’s into her History notebook. We all decide to meet in front of Bryce’s house at 8:30.
     
    “Bryce Hensley’s?” Nelson asks during Art class, his voice cracking. “Why would you want to go there?”
    “Well, they shot a movie at his house. That’s pretty cool, don’t you think?”
    “That’s why you’re going?”
    “Yeah, sure.” I don’t look him in the eye.
    I can feel his gaze on me for a moment. Then he takes his X-Acto knife and digs furiously into his linoleum square.
     
    Amazingly, Dad says yes. I go for the guilt, as Michelle suggested, and it works.
    “This is our time together,” he argues. “I don’t get to see the two of you during the week.”
    “But that’s not our fault, is it?”
    It gets to him. Right away.
    “Sylvie, you know I can’t let you go just like that. Something could happen.” Dad shakes his