Midnight Howl Read Online Free PDF Page A

was staying for cooking club. Not only would he also need a late ride home, there was actually an activities bus thatwould drop us off. So I could tell my mom that no one was going to have to make a special trip for me. Once she stopped worrying that I was going to be a bad guest, she was really excited that Wolf Valley had an astronomy club.
    “See?” she said. “I knew this was going to be a great semester!”
    “Whatever, Mom,” I said, laughing. “It’s only been one day.” But I was happy.
    I felt shy again when I found Room 204, where the astronomy club meeting was being held. There were about fifteen kids milling around, and the only one I recognized was Lily. She was sitting at a desk, flipping through a notebook. There was a teacher at the back of the room, but he had his head down and looked like he was correcting papers, not getting ready to start the meeting.
    “New
girl,” said a boy standing near the door. He looked me up and down. “Come on in.” He bared his teeth at me, showing me his braces and a chunk of green stuff caught in them. “We’re ready for some
new
blood.” He put his arm over the lower half of his face and did a vampire impression. “Wah-ha-ha-ha.”
    Lily looked up. “Shut up, Anderson,” she said, and smiled at me. “Hi, Marisol. Come sit with me.”
    The boy with the braces mimicked her.
“Shut up, Anderson, shut up, Anderson.
When is Anderson going to feel the love?” But he stopped bothering me.
    I sat down at the desk next to Lily’s. “Thanks,” I said, relieved.
    “No problem,” she replied with a smile. “We’re just about ready to get started. I’m the president, so let me tell you about the meetings.”
    I glanced at the teacher at the back of the room. “Oh,” said Lily. “Mr. Samuels just shows up because we need a club sponsor. He’s not that interested in astronomy. We really run the club ourselves.
    “So …” She slapped a piece of paper down on the desk in front of me. Looking down, I saw a list that read:
    Fabric of Space
    Steady State versus Expanding Universe
    Human Space Exploration
    Eclipses
    Star Types/Star Life Cycle
    Comets
    “These are some ideas for topics,” Lily said. “Every week someone gives a presentation. If there’s something else you want to talk about that’s not on the list, that’s okay, too. Um, unless it’s not about astronomy. Somebody wanted to give a presentation on star signs and romance one time, which wasn’t really the same thing.”
    She giggled a little as she put down another piece of paper, which had another neat list of topics, each with a person’s name next to it. I saw that today someone named Becka Thompson was giving a presentation on black holes.
    “Wow,” I said. “You’re really organized.” I was surprised: Lily had been quiet at lunch and seemed like she took her time at everything, even smiling. I hadn’t thought of her as a take-charge kind of person. The science club I was in back in Austin was totally run by the teacher, not the students.
    As Lily straightened the papers, I noticed a small golden-brown birthmark on her arm in the shape of a crescent moon. It was unusual, and sort of pretty. The moon shape was so perfect for the president of the astronomy club that I almost said something like “Hey, with a moon birthmark you’ll never have to get a tattoo.” Luckily, I bit it back at the lastminute. She might not think it was funny, and the last thing I needed was someone else here thinking I was weird (clearly Hailey already did).
    “I’ll do comets,” I told her. “But give me a few weeks.” I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of talking in front of a bunch of strangers, but I would worry about that later.
    She wrote me down for a date in November, then stood up and looked around. “Guys?” she said. Everyone stopped talking and turned to her. “Becka?” she called out. “You’re up! Becka’s talking about black holes, everybody.”
    A skinny girl with messy black