Devine Intervention Read Online Free PDF Page A

they’d worn underpants.
    When Talentpalooza!! finally arrived, Megan and Heidi made their way out of the echoing hallway and into the semi-darkened auditorium. Heidi wore her mother’s trench coat over her costume so she could minimize the amount of time she’d be seen in public dressed like a mutant bird.
    Don’t do it. Don’t go onstage. Don’t do it. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.
    Megan’s voice filled Heidi’s other ear.
    â€œWe have to do this, Heidi, if only to take high school back from the people who rule it. They are Satan’s minions. They make high school hell. We must defeat them.”
    Heidi pressed her palm against her forehead. So many voices. Jerome in one ear, Megan in the other. And then there were the machine-gun giggles of people who’d seen Megan’s costume. She’d chosen something called Fantasia in Spangles, and it was decorated with enough sequins to cause temporary blindness and/or seizures in anyone wholooked at it directly. This did not bode well for Heidi. If Megan’s costume was funny, Heidi’s was full-on hilarious.
    They found two seats near the stage, just in front of Sully Peterson. The back of Heidi’s neck warmed, a side effect, no doubt, of sitting in front of the hottest guy in school. For five years, Heidi had studied him, had memorized his jawline, the color of his eyes, the way his hair curled up at the edges. She detected the slightest aroma of leather and sweat, a comforting smell despite the situation.
    â€œShut up, you two,” he said.
    Heidi sat up a little straighter. He’d said “you two.” He’d noticed her. After all these years, he’d noticed her. Her body went into blush overdrive, and she was glad his seat was behind hers, or she might have melted his puffy quilted vest, the one from the catalog that was banned back in middle school for “inappropriate pairings of classic poetry with images of shirtless minors,” according to the letter the principal sent home. The catalog had only gotten racier in the following years, and guys like Sully dressed exclusively in their clothes, looking like Greek gods taking vacations in the Hamptons so they might seduce petite, flaxen-haired heiresses in foamy seaside encounters, a scenario she’d internalized as her personal ideal while reading a romance novel one Saturday morning in the public library.
    In the novel, you could tell an immortal by his glow, and Sully definitely was putting out at least sixty watts. He also looked like he had the hand strength to rip open a bodice, not that Heidi actually owned anything moredelicate than a sports bra. She simply wanted to worship at his altar. Was that so wrong? Okay, and she would not have objected if he pressed his lips against hers and pronounced them ambrosial. It didn’t seem like too much to ask. In her head, when that magical moment happened, she planned to say, “You may drink of them, sir.” She hoped it wouldn’t sound so goofy in real life. Also, she hoped that ambrosia was something you drank, and not some sort of Jell-O salad like the kind they served in the cafeteria on the fourth Wednesday of each month.
    Megan had no problem talking with Sully. “I’ll be quiet when I’m dead, Peterson.”
    Heidi sank in her chair. That was not the perfect conversation starter. She wished she could make like a real-life penguin and dive below a shelf of floating ice in the peaceful frozen darkness somewhere a million miles away.
    â€œSorry, Heidi, but I had to do that,” Megan whispered. “He’s a douche box.”
    â€œDouche bag .”
    â€œNo, box . I’m trying to start a new insult franchise. Put box on the end of almost any word and it’s an insult. Sully box. Pudding box. See? Foul. Anyway. High school is hell. Truly. Consider the evidence: Morning PE classes on a good hair day. The smell on the bus after they let the middle