Red Heart Tattoo Read Online Free PDF Page A

all right. I’m not upset because I got benched.”
    “Well, I am.”
    Kelli wanted to shout,
It’s not your life
, but she didn’t. In truth, Jane had never embraced that almost twenty years had passed since she’d attended Edison High School and been voted most popular and been a queen bee, dating Brock Larson, the football team’s quarterback. Kelli snatched Jane’s cell phone away. “Don’t call her. Please!”
    “What’s wrong with you? You love performing on that squad.”
    “Not right now. Classes are hard this year. I don’t mind stepping back.”
    Jane crossed her arms, fumed. “Who got your slot?”
    “Elana Mendez.”
    “That Mexican—”
    “She’s good, Mom,” Kelli interrupted.
    “You beat her out last spring for the position, so she wasn’t as good as you.”
    “She deserves my place now.”
    “What about when your wrist heals? Is Linda going to give you your spot again?”
    “Football season will be all but over in six weeks. Doc said it would take—”
    Jane scoffed. “And in January basketball starts. Then soccer. You don’t have to lose the entire year. You need assurances that this Mendez girl will be out once you heal. She’s a junior. She’ll have another year to be on the squad after you graduate in June.”
    If
I graduate
, Kelli thought. She felt as if she weretalking to a stone wall. Why didn’t her mother get it? Kelli didn’t
want
her place back on the squad. She was through with being a cheerleader. Finished with the acrobatics, the falls, the bruises, the constant weight watching. There was so much that her mother didn’t understand and that she couldn’t explain at this moment.
    Jane’s features softened. “Believe me, honey. These are the best years of your life—”
    “Give it up, Mom. You’ve told me this a thousand times.”
    “Don’t raise your voice to me. It’s the truth. Before you know it you’ll be out here in the real world grubbing for a living.”
    Like me …
The unsaid but implied words hung in the air. Kelli put her hands over her ears. “Not now, Mom. Just give it a rest! I don’t care about cheerleading. I don’t care that Elana got my place. I. Don’t. Care.”
    Kelli turned and ran from the room while her mother stood speechless.
    Morgan sat with a sobbing Kelli in Kelli’s wrecked bedroom, trying to comfort her. “Do you really not care about losing your slot to Elana, or is that just something you told your mother?”
    Kelli blew her nose. “I really don’t care.”
    Morgan hadn’t expected that answer. The cheerleading and dance squad had meant everything to Kelli since ninth grade. “Then if it doesn’t matter, why are you crying?”
    Kelli picked at the fringe on a pillow, stared down at her hands. “It’s just—it’s just everything.”
    “You and Mark?” Morgan ventured her best guess. “You two have a fight?”
    Kelli nodded, wiped her eyes. “I’m afraid he’s dumping me.”
    “Impossible! You two are like spaghetti and meatballs. Ice cream and cake—”
    “Oil and water,” Kelli interrupted.
    Usually Kelli ran to Morgan with details of every word that passed between her and Mark, but she had been pretty withdrawn lately. “Why do you think that?”
    “He never calls anymore.”
    “Well, with football practice and classes—”
    “Last year he texted me five times a day. All summer we went places together.”
    “I know. Trent and I were with you.”
    “Now I have to practically trip him in the hall to get his attention.”
    Morgan was baffled. How could she have not noticed? “So you think he’s into another girl?”
    “Girls flirt with him all the time.”
    “But you don’t know that for sure.”
    “I don’t know anything for sure.”
    “Well, then—”
    “Don’t.” Kelli held up her hand. “I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
    Morgan sat, still puzzling over her friend’s behavior. “You have been kind of moody lately. Guys don’t likemoody, you know.” Trent liked