Sealed with a Diss Read Online Free PDF Page A

attention.
    “Forget it.” Cam reached around her waist and gripped the bag.
    “Why?” Claire giggle-swatted his hands away.
    “It’s not polite,” he said in a fake girly voice. “You might find my tampons.”
    “Ew!” Alicia rolled her eyes in disgust.
    Claire hated that Cam knew what tampons were. What if he thought she actually used them? The notion filled her with so much nervous energy, she thrust her hand inside his backpack and accidentally smashed her knuckle into the spine of a notebook. The pain was sobering. “Are you hiding presents for me?” She managed to ask despite the throbbing.
    Massie shot her a quick thumbs-up, silently encouraging Claire to press on.
    “Yes!” Cam giggle-tugged the bag away.
    “Liar!” She giggle-tugged it back.
    “I swear!”
    “We’ll see about that!”
    With a final tug Claire managed to recapture the bag. “See ya!” She stuffed it under her arm like a football and serpentined around the tables as if charging the end zone.
    “You’re dead, Lyons!” Cam shouted as he chased after her. “Give it back!”
    Dylan, Alicia, Kristen, and Massie began chanting Claire’s name, encouraging her to run faster and go, go, go. Which she did, all the way to the very last stall in the ladies’ bathroom, where she caught her breath and wondered what Cam could possibly be hiding.

W ESTCHESTER , NY
S LICE OF H EAVEN P IZZA S HOP
    Monday, April 12th
    4:22 P.M.
    The restaurant’s doughy aroma was replaced by that of the pineapple-scented hand soap or tile cleaner or whatever it was that made the all-white bathroom smell like Hawaiian Tropic.
    Claire lowered the wooden lid of the toilet seat and sat down. She placed the backpack on her lap and peered inside. The scent of pencil erasers and fermented red apples shot out like an invisible geyser.
    It was funny how something as simple as having Cam’s knapsack made her feel closer to him. Like he was there with her and they were connected and—
    “Claire, give it back!” he shouted as he banged on the door.
    “Go away, young man!” she bleated in her best old-lady voice.
    Part of her felt ashamed for being so obvious and flirty with Cam. And part of her couldn’t wait to see what he was hiding. A love poem? A bag of gummy bears? A burned CD of songs that made him think of her?
    She reached inside and pulled out a black-and-white composition notebook. Anxious to catch a glimpse of his handwriting and to see the kind of notes he took (detailed vs. single word, possible margin doodles of her?), Claire opened it. All three postcards she had sent him from L.A.—of the Santa Monica Pier, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, the Hollywood sign—fell to the oatmeal-colored floor. Her heart filled and floated like a hot air balloon.
He’d kept them!
    “No snooping!” Cam shouted, as if he was watching her.
    “I’m
not
.” She stuffed the postcards between the pages and then heard a light
ping
.
    A thin metal paper clip had fallen out of the notebook and landed on the tile floor. And then a folded piece of paper floated onto her lap. Claire leaned forward to retrieve the paper clip and a flurry of loose papers tumbled out.
    Knowing full well she should quickly attach them back in place without peeking, Claire nonetheless felt compelled to at least glance at a page or two. How else would she put them respectfully back in the right order?
    Cam banged on the door again, a little harder and a little longer than he had before.
    “Claire, give me back my stuff.” His voice sounded more serious this time.
    “Coming,” Claire muttered while “respectfully” scanning what appeared to be a collection of printed IM conversations… with someone named Nikki. His messages were typed in Courier while
hers
were in some swirly-girly font that automatically dotted the
i
’s with hearts.
    Claire’s pulse thumped loudly in her ears. Phrases like “camp this summer” and “when I wore your leather jacket” and “Valentine’s Day gift”