Leslie's Journal Read Online Free PDF Page A

whatever’s on the coffee table. I sigh a lot and moan and generally bug everybody till they start throwing cushions at me. Then finally it’s midnight, and Mrs. Kincaid comes back down and turns the lights out.
    “Sleep tight.”
    It is always the same and it is always torture!
    So when Katie invites me this time I say, “Sure, great,” but I’m seriously thinking up excuses to cancel. Until I get home, that is, and find Mom rummaging around my room in Amazon Warrior mode. It seems Mr. Manley has called about my “continued inappropriate dress,” and Mom’s discovered I’m not wearing what I leave the house in. In fact, I’m wearing clothes she didn’t even know I had.
    “You’re quite a piece of work, Leslie,” she fumes, pointing at my secret wardrobe. She’s started to dig clothes out of supposedly empty drawers under my bed, and she’s throwing them onto a big pile in the middle of the room. “What’s the meaning of this?”
    How do I answer that? I don’t even try. Instead, I point at the “Leslie’s Room: Keep Out” sign on the door. “Can’t you read?” I yell. “Like, whatever happened to trust?”
    Mom shoves the pile into a green garbage bag. “These are going out with the trash.”
    “Who the hell do you think you are?”
    She ignores me, holding up a black bustier. “Where did you get this filth?”
    “For your information, that filth just so happens to be a present from Dad.” This is partly true, because I bought most of this stuff with money he gave me for Christmas and my birthday. Also with money I borrowed from his wallet. (I don’t call it stealing, I call it getting even. He says he gives me money instead of gifts so I can get something I’ll really like. Bullshit. He’d rather spend time with precious Brenda than shop for his daughter.)
    Anyway, Mom is apparently deaf. She stuffs the last of the clothes into the bag and heads towards the door. “Get out of my way.”
    “You toss my stuff, next time you’re out I’ll toss your stuff!”
    Mom stops in her tracks. She’s so mad I think she’s going to have a stroke. “You are sooo grounded!”
    “Go ahead. Ground me.” I glare back. “If I have to stay home, I’ll make your life hell. You up for it?”
    For a second, Mom gets this scared look in her eyes. She knows she can’t back down. But she knows I won’t back down either. Stalemate. That’s when I play my ace. I tell her about Katie’s sleepover and how Katie was planning to introduce me to some girls from her church youth group. That cools Mom down, seeing as she thinks Katie is such a good influence. “Will her mother be there?”
    “What do you think?”
    She checks anyway, calling Mrs. Kincaid that very second. To cut a long story short, I’m no longer grounded and the bag of clothes stayed in my room. I should be a diplomat or something.
    Which brings me to how God exists after all.
    I’m at my locker this morning when I realize I’m being stared at. I turn around, and it’s Jason. He doesn’t say much. Just smiles and points his finger at me. “I’ll be at Mister Pizza’s at 12:10.” Then he winks, swivels slowly and saunters down the hall.
    Katie, Ashley, Kimberly and Sara all stand there dumbstruck, jaws bouncing off the floor. I take off fast so they won’t see I feel the same way.
    The rest of the morning I spend in the washroom getting ready for our date. I make sure I’m at Mister Pizza’s early. But no sooner am I getting comfortable than in waltzes the coven. They sit down at the next booth.
    “What are you trying to do, scare him off?” I say.
    “You don’t own this place,” Ashley smirks.
    I want to smack her, but then I see Jason crossing the road, so I let out a major sigh and move to the booth at the far end. In he walks all breezy and confident, gives me a nod, goes up to the counter and orders two slices of double cheese, pepperoni and mushrooms and a couple of Cokes. (He knows what I want without even asking— is