Perfect Couple Read Online Free PDF Page B

down. This was the guy one of my best friends thought was my perfect match?
    Kaye read the look on my face. “Only because of his hat,” she backtracked.
    “Why are you curious?” Tia asked me. “You’re dying to know why so many people paired you with Brody, aren’t you?”
    “Nooooo.” I tried to brush it off. “I have a boyfriend. Brody has a girlfriend. Being elected together is a big joke between us.”
    But joke or not, sometime in the next two weeks, we would have to take our yearbook picture together. And during that short interlude, at least on my end, our relationship would be dead serious.
    *   *   *
    I wished I could have hung with Kaye and Tia at the football game that night. But Tia stood next to Will in the drum section of the marching band. Kaye was on the sidelines with the other cheerleaders, including Brody’s glamorous girlfriend, Grace. I braved the sidelines all by myself to shoot the game.
    Though I was a bit unclear on the rules, I’d always enjoyed football games. I loved the band music, the screams of the crowd and the cheerleaders, and the charged atmosphere. And though I feared for my life a couple of times when huge guys in helmets and pads hurtled toward me, the danger seemed worthwhile after I got some great shots of our players.
    That is, I got some great shots of Brody . In the third quarter, our defense recovered a fumble and returned the ball all the way to the end zone for a touchdown. I missed the entire thing because I was pretending to take pictures of our team watching from the sidelines. Really, I’d zoomed in on Brody, whose helmet was off. He’d pulled his long, wet hair out of his eyes with a band. And he had no idea he was in my lens. He focused on the action on the field and screamed his heart out for his friends on the defensive line.
    In the fourth quarter, Sawyer, dressed as the pelican mascot, came marching jauntily toward me. He picked up his knees and big bird feet high with every step, swinging hisfeathery elbows. I hoped he hadn’t caught me gazing wistfully at Brody. I wasn’t sure how well he could see out of the enormous bird head he was wearing. If he’d noticed my moony stare, he would make fun of me for it.
    He put his wing around me.
    I glared up at him.
    He turned his huge head to look at me, too. His fuzz-covered beak hit me in the eye.
    “Get your wing off me,” I said, moving out from under his arm.
    He put his hands on his padded bird hips and stomped his foot like he wanted to know why.
    “You have a lot of nerve, bird,” I said. “Quinn and Noah were so brave today, but you had to take a jab at them, and at Kennedy and Brody and me . As if people can be turned gay! Now Kennedy is mad at me because of what you said.”
    Sawyer shrugged.
    “I know you don’t like Kennedy, but he’s my boyfriend !”
    He opened his hands, pleading with me.
    “Sure, you didn’t mean it. That’s the problem. If a joke is funny, you’ll go ahead and blurt it out, whether it hurts somebody or not.”
    He bowed his head, and his shoulders slumped. He was sorry.
    “I don’t care,” I said. “Go away.”
    He got down on his knees and clasped his hands, begging me.
    “No,” I said. “You deserve to sweat it for a while.” Instantly I felt bad for the way I’d phrased this. He had fainted from heat exhaustion four days earlier, and he was probably dying in that getup. The night was at least eighty degrees.
    He didn’t take offense, apparently. He wrapped both wings around my leg.
    I tried to step backward, out of his grasp. He held on tightly. His wings were at my knee, dangerously close to pushing my dress up higher than I’d wanted to hike it in front of five thousand people.
    I glanced up at the student section. Kennedy pointed at me and laughed to everyone around him.
    Imagining the only thing worse that could happen, I looked over at the team. Sure enough, Brody was watching us too. Suddenly, his friends slugging it out on the defensive