Adorkable Read Online Free PDF Page A

fingers flew over the keys as I wrote my first tweet of the evening. Then I hit return and within ten seconds someone had replied.
    And, just like that, I wasn’t alone any more.

 
    Ilove Sunday evenings. The other six evenings of the week are so crammed full of homework, football practice, school council meetings, debating society business and doing admin work for my parents that even going out with my friends feels like one more thing to be ticked off my to-do list. Besides, my parents are adamant that I need ten hours’ sleep to prepare me for the week ahead so I’m strongly discouraged (some people might even call it forbidden) from going out on Sunday evenings.
    My mum was bathing my little sisters and as I padded up the narrow stairs to my attic bedroom I could hear Melly complaining bitterly about sharing a bath with Alice. ‘She’s five, I’m seven. I need my dignity, Mum.’
    I grinned as I shut my bedroom door and carefully placed my laden tray on the desk. On Sunday evenings my mum expects me to clean out the fridge of all the food that’s left overfrom the weekend before the supermarket delivery arrives on Monday morning. Also we’re not meant to eat what they call ‘rubbish’ Monday to Thursday so it’s the last chance to stuff my face with greasy, sugary food.
    Munching on a cold spring roll, I switched on my computer so I could finish my Physics homework.
They
think I finish all my assignments before I go out on Friday night, but they couldn’t be more wrong.
    Mum knocked on the door as I was jotting down the last of my formulae. ‘Michael? Everything all right in there?’
    She wasn’t allowed to come in unless she had my express permission since the time she’d caught me with Megan, my girlfriend before Scarlett, in a compromising position on my IKEA rug.
    There’d been a week of long, excruciating discussions about personal boundaries and getting girls into trouble. Now, whenever Mum put my clean clothes in a laundry basket outside my door, there were always packets of condoms stuffed into the pockets of my jeans. I had ninety-three condoms still in their shiny foil wrappers at the last count.
    ‘Yeah, everything’s cool,’ I called out. ‘I took the last of the chocolate chip pancakes Dad made yesterday, was that OK?’
    ‘Better in your mouth than on my hips,’ Mum said. ‘What are you doing in there anyway?’
    Sometimes I thought back with fondness to those halcyon days when she used to barge into my room without knocking. It was almost preferable to the way she stood outside my door and bombarded me with questions.
    ‘Justmucking about on the computer,’ I said vaguely.
    ‘Well, Dad and I are about to watch a DVD if you want to join us,’ she persisted. ‘Nothing too chick-flicky.’
    ‘No, it’s all right,’ I ground out, ‘Really, Mum, I’ll be down later.’
    ‘If you’re sure …’
    I didn’t answer, just grunted, because if I carried on talking she’d be there for ever. Eventually I heard her tread on the stairs – she was the only person I knew who could make her footsteps sound reproachful. I turned back to Facebook. Scarlett was online but as soon as I logged on, she logged off. Or turned her status to ‘invisible’ so I’d think she’d logged off – either way, it didn’t look good for the limping, bleeding beast that was all that was left of our relationship.
    Almost as if my fingers were acting independently of my brain, I saw them type ‘Jeane Smith + blog + Twitter’ into the Google search box. I didn’t know why I was bothering when the five minutes I’d had of Jeane Smith that afternoon were enough to last me the rest of the decade and anyway, there had to be
thousands
of women called Jeane Smith who had blogs. Even if it seemed like a really poseurish thing to do, to stick an e on the end of your name so it sounded French or something and … oh!
    The very first link of the 1,390,000,000 search results directed me to her blog,