Ready or Not by Meg Cabot Page A

tax in her head. Oh, and she can do a back handspring. All I can do is draw a naked guy. And apparently, I can’t even do that very well, since I concentrate on the parts and not the whole.
    Â Â Â Â 3.   Mom and Dad totally like—and trust—my boyfriend. Lucy’s boyfriend? Not so much. So they spend hours arguing with her about him, telling her she could do better, et cetera. Mom and Dad basically ignore me.
    Â Â Â Â 2.   I have only one friend—my best friend, Catherine, who is so sweet and sensitive I can’t even tell her about my boyfriend possibly wanting to have sex with me over Thanksgiving weekend on account of it would freak her out since she doesn’t even have a boyfriend anymore (unless you count the one in Qatar, which I don’t), whereas Lucy has nine million friends who she can tell anything to because they are completely shallow and have no emotions. Like cyborgs.

    And the number-one reason why Lucy has it way better than I do:
    Â Â Â Â 1.   She’s clearly already lost her virginity and has put it behind her, since it was obviously no big deal to her. It is a huge deal to me, however, which means I will probably be stuck with it (my virginity) until my thirties, or death, whichever comes first.

4
    â€œWait, so, what did it look like?” Catherine wanted to know.
    I couldn’t believe she was so curious. I mean, I could. But I also couldn’t. Because I really didn’t want to talk about it.
    â€œIt looked like a penis,” I said. “What do you think? I mean, you’ve seen them before. You used to go skinny dipping at the shore with your brothers when you were little, you said.”
    â€œYeah, sure,” Catherine said. “But that was before they got, you know. Hair down there.”
    â€œOkay,” I said. “Gross.”
    â€œWell, it’s true. Seriously. How big was it?”
    I was starting to be sorry I’d brought it up. I’d only done so because she’d asked how my life drawing class had gone. I’d thought to share with her the true meaning behind the words “life drawing.”
    Now I wished I hadn’t.
    â€œIt was average, I guess,” I said. “I mean, it’s not like I have a lot of experience in that department.”
    â€œI’m just glad I don’t have one,” Catherine said with a delicate shudder. “I mean, can you imagine, having it dangling there, all the time? How do they even ride bikes?”
    â€œSam?” Trust Kris Parks to choose that moment, of all the moments in the world, to sidle up to us where we stood in the lunch line and go, “Got a minute?”
    Kris is not exactly my favorite person. And up until I became a semi-celebrity, the feeling was mutual.
    But then I was on the six o’clock news a couple of times, and Kris decided I was her new best friend. I guess the fact that I’m dating the president’s son outweighs the fact that I don’t own a stitch of Lilly Pulitzer. Which, in Kris’s book, makes you one of those Untouchables Rebecca and I learned about on National Geographic Explorer.
    â€œListen, I was wondering if we could count on you to help us set up the gym next week,” Kris said with a simper (SAT word meaning “to smile in a silly, affected, or conceited manner”). “You know, for the town hall meeting….”
    â€œYeah, sure,” I said, to make her go away.
    â€œSwell,” Kris said. Trust Kris to say something like “swell.” It was almost as bad as me saying something like “I’m peachy” upon seeing my first you-know-what. “We can really use the help. So far the only people who’ve volunteered are, you know, the student council members. And Right Way, of course. It’s really embarrassing. I mean, that the president is going to be announcing this important new program from right here in our own