Ready or Not by Meg Cabot Page B

school, and most of the kids in this school are so apathetic about it. I really hope he doesn’t think we’re all like that. The president, I mean. I really want to make us look good in front of him. And Random Alvarez. I mean, he’s just so hot—” Then she got a good look at my head. “What happened to your—” She broke off and bit her lip. “Never mind.”
    â€œMy hair?” I reached up to finger it. “I dyed it. Why? Don’tcha like it?”
    I knew Kris didn’t like my hair. Preps like Kris aren’t into Midnight Ebony. I was just torturing her for the fun of it.
    â€œOh, no, it’s really nice.” Kris seemed to recover herself. “It’s permanent?”
    â€œSemi,” I said. “Why?”
    â€œNo reason,” Kris said with a bright smile. “Looks great!”
    I knew Kris was lying, and not just because her lips were moving. I had given myself a fully objective examination in the bathroom mirror just that morning, and I knew for a fact that Lucy was right: My new black hair looked stupid. Maybe if I had dyed my eyebrows to match, it might not have looked so bad.
    But I hadn’t done it as a fashion statement so much as a statement statement…that statement being, “Say so long to red-haired, goody-two-shoes, president-saving Samantha Madison, and say hello to life-drawing, possibly-soon-not-to-be-a-virgin Sam.”
    Of course, the fact that I’d dyed my hair before my first life drawing lesson, and then decided to rid myself of my virginity (possibly), was just symbolic of how far I’d come from the pre-dye, red-headed me.
    â€œThis Return to Family initiative of the president’s,” Kris went on, studiously ignoring my hair. “I hope you’ll tell him how excited we all are about it here at Adams Prep, and that we’re behind him one hundred and ten percent. I mean, family is the most important thing.”
    â€œYeah,” I said. “Well, who isn’t pro-family?” That’s what I said. But inside my head, I was going, Why won’t you die, Kris Parks? Why?
    â€œMaybe you’d be interested in coming to a Right Way meeting sometime?” Kris glanced at Catherine, as if aware for the first time that I wasn’t standing there alone. “You and your, uh, friend.”
    Kris knows perfectly well what Catherine’s name is. She was just being what she is, a preppy uber-snob.
    Which she illustrated a second later by going, as a girl in an Adams Prep dance team uniform walked by in her flippy purple skirt, “Oh my God, did you hear about Debra Mullins? She supposedly hooked up with Jeff Rothberg under the bleachers after the Trinity game last week. She’s such a slut.” Then she added, cheerfully, to me, “Well, see you in the gym Monday!”
    â€œOh, we’ll be there,” I said, just to get Kris to leave.
    It worked. She left us to order our double cheeseburgers in peace.
    â€œGod, I hate her,” Catherine said.
    â€œTell me about it.”
    â€œNo, I mean, I really hate her.”
    â€œWelcome to my world.”
    â€œYeah, but at least she sucks up to you. On account of David. She’d never call you a slut. I mean, if you and David ever, you know, hooked up. And she found out.” Then, Catherine added, with a laugh, “Like that’s ever going to happen.”
    I didn’t know which Catherine found more unlikely—the prospect of David and me ever having sex, or Kris finding out about it. I wasn’t about to let her know that the former was more imminent (SAT word meaning “threatening to occur immediately; near at hand; impending”) than she might expect. Not because I didn’t trust her to keep it a secret. I’d trust Catherine with my life.
    It was just that I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do. About Thanksgiving, I mean. I hadn’t had a chance to tell David yet that my