How I Found the Perfect Dress Read Online Free PDF

devouring the extra-large carton of popcorn in his lap.
    â€œMorgan! Hey! Sit over here!”
    It was Sarah’s boyfriend, Dylan. As usual, he was defying conventional notions of coolness by sitting apart from his friends, all the way down front—the better to cheer for his woman.
    â€œI saved you a seat!” he yelled to me. At least I thought that’s what he yelled. The pregame noise in the gymnasium was deafening. But then he patted the balled-up coat on the bleacher next to him and made a “come on down” gesture. I fought my way through the crowd to where he was sitting, and he pushed his coat over to make room for me.
    â€œAwesome,” he said. “Sarah told me to make sure you got a good seat, if you came.”
    I smiled, but my feelings were all over the place: I was pleased to know that I still mattered that much to Sarah, sad to think that she thought I might not come, embarrassed to admit that I almost didn’t. “That’s nice,” I said. “Thanks.”
    â€œNo prob!” he said, eyes locked on the referee. “Sarah says you’re like a rabbit’s foot: You always bring her good luck—okey dokey, here we go!”
    The ref blew the whistle and the first half began. It was a good game from the start, but more interesting to me than the game itself was watching Dylan watch Sarah play.
    â€œShhhh!” he hissed when Sarah was trying to get possession of the ball, as if a high school gym packed full of crazed fans could be shushed quiet. “Go Sarah! Get it get it get it get it, she got it, go baby go baby GO!” When Sarah jumped high and slam-dunked the ball into the net, and the home team crowd screamed and chanted, Go ’Wiches, go ’Wiches!, Dylan looked like he was about to go airborne with pride.
    Either the dude really digs basketball or this is a man in love , I thought. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Sarah was oblivious, her concentration totally on the game.
    Forsaking my usual too-cool-to-act-like-a-fool attitude, I followed Dylan’s example and cheered my brains out for the’Wiches. When Sarah scored we bounced up and down and slapped high fives. At halftime, Mike Fitch came down to deliver a couple of extra-large Cokes, unasked.
    â€œNice lungs on you two.” Mike handed us the drinks. “You must be parched. Drink up.”
    â€œMike, you know Morgan, right?” Dylan said it in the most casual way, but the odds of me knowing who Mike Fitch was were much greater than the odds of Mike knowing who I was.
    â€œNot well enough.” Mike grinned. “We should hang out sometime. Later, sports fans!”
    Another girl might have read something into that exchange, but I knew better. Mike was always nice to everyone. Being charming was part of his charm. Go figure.
    The ’Wiches won, largely thanks to Sarah’s fierce play. I watched Dylan hug her afterward, as she stood panting in her sweat-soaked uniform, and felt something heavy form inside my chest. You could call it jealousy, I guess, or your standard third-wheel feeling. It’s just that I wanted somebody to look at me the way Dylan had been looking at Sarah all night. With that kind of devotion, so strong and so real that it wouldn’t matter if we had to wait a year or two to be together, even if there was an ocean of oceans keeping us apart.
    In the not-so-distant days when my parents were getting along better, my dad used to call my mom Apple—“because she’s the apple of my eye,” he’d explained to Tammy, who still found it confusing that Mom’s real name was Helen and not Mom. I’d always thought that expression sounded gross—who’d want to put an apple in his eye? But now I understood.
    I’m always looking at you, is what it meant. When I gaze out at the world, you’re in the middle of everything I see.
    Sarah, Dylan, the girls on the team and all their respective