Dear Rockstar Read Online Free PDF Page A

personal space. He just watched me struggle, pouring more Skittles into his hand and popping them into his mouth, chewing them up while he waited. Finally, I reached over his lap, leaning in to sweep the piece of candy into my hand, when Dale caught me.
    I looked up, surprised, meeting his eyes, and then down at our hands, his thumb and forefinger encircling my wrist. I couldn’t breathe. All the air had escaped my lungs. I might as well have been on the moon for all the air I could manage to take in. I couldn’t do anything but watch him turn my hand over and pry my fingers open, where the piece of candy was already leaving a red stain because my hands were so damp.
    Dale touched the red spot, rubbing it into the skin at the center of my palm, a sensation that sent electric shockwaves through me, as if that one tiny spot on my hand was connected to every nerve ending in my body. I watched as he put his finger in his mouth, sucking off sweetness, lips puckered like a kiss, eyes never leaving mine. It was the first time I noticed they were blue, not hazel like his rock star look-alike’s. They were a deep, bottomless ocean blue, a bright, sun-on-the-water, blinding sort of blue, and there was so much revealed there I found myself torn between not being able to look away and feeling like I couldn’t hold his gaze for one more second.
    Then he took the Skittles package and tipped it over, spilling a rainbow into my palm. He closed my hand over the myriad of colorful candies, letting me go with that same motion of his head. “Go on.” I smiled, opening my hand and looking down at the already melting little bits of sweetness he’d offered. My head argued with my body, telling me I should eat them like a girl, one-by-one, draw it out, tease him, make it sexy and fun and even a little erotic because—well, even I couldn’t deny there was something going on here, some sort of attraction, even if it was just my Pavlovian response to his Tyler Vincentness.
    Instead, my body won—somehow my body always won—and I opened my mouth wide, probably looking like a snake unhinging its jaw but too hungry to care, shoving all of the Skittles into my mouth at once and chewing them into a mass of indistinguishable flavor, just pure sugar, glorious energy, my brain lighting up as I looked at him, thanking him with my eyes. There were so many Skittles in my mouth I felt like a chipmunk.
    He grinned, tilting the package at me again, but I shook my head, licking the traces of the rainbow off my palm in a very embarrassing but unavoidable way. He tilted the package back, spilling Skittles into his mouth, chewing with me.
    Then he leaned over with his fruity breath and whispered, “Hi Sara.”
    I startled, head snapping toward him, eyes narrowing. How did he know my name? He tapped my notebook, sitting closed on the desk, but I had doodled on the front—I doodled on everything—a little heart with an arrow and “Sara loves Tyler” scrawled in the middle. I flushed, grabbing my notebook and turning it over, realizing there were just as many Tyler doodles on the back as there were on the front. I felt him shaking with silent laughter beside me when I opened my notebook to a blank page, leaving it on the desk that way.
    “Can I ask you something?” His voice low in my ear, not touching me but so close I felt his body heat.
    “You just did.” I glanced up at Woodall, heaping more abuse on the poor periodic table up front. He was randomly calling on people to identify elements—something he claimed we should all already know—and I knew I’d better pay attention before he randomly called on me.
    “She speaks!”
    I gave him a withering look. Behind him, the Flashdance twins mocked me with big eyes, pretending to lick their palms, batting their eyelashes. Frowning, I crossed my arms over my chest and turned my attention back to the front of the room, where it should have been all along, I reminded myself, if I ever wanted to graduate