Sleeping with Beauty Read Online Free PDF Page B

batting average and came within one season of tying DiMaggio’s record.” She lobbed her wadded-up trash at the small wastebasket beside Lucy’s desk, missing by a wide margin, despite being less than two feet away. It was a good thing Jana only wrote about sports.
    “Yeah,” Lucy said, “but can he consistently miss an easy two-pointer with his fanny wedged in a third-grade desk? I think not.”
    Jana sighed and let the front legs of her chair
thump
back on the tile floor. “True. My wrist action sucks and my release is all wrong. I shoot like a girl.”
    Lucy lowered her chin and shot Jana a look. “Please don’t tell me you bribed Dave into trying to teach you how to play hoops again.”
    She shouldn’t give her friend a hard time. It was sad, really. Jana was a die-hard jock, always had been. Maybe it was the very lack of any kind of continuous male influence in her life, but she’d been hooked on sports as long as Lucy had known her. From the time she could read, she devoured the sports section of the
Post
and every issue of
Sports Illustrated.
ESPN’s SportsCenter was her version of CNN.
    Jana could tell you the starting lineup for any team, college or pro, in any of the major sports. She could whip out stats, debate the merits of the most complex coaching strategy, and pretty much wipe the floor with you in terms of predicting draft choices and win-loss records well before the season started. Any season. She worshiped sports. All sports.
    She was just completely inept at actually playing any of them.
    But it didn’t stop her from trying. Bless her heart.
    Lucy, quite happy with her status as an avowed—and therefore injury-free—couch potato, said, “He’s a hockey player, Jana. How many times—”
    “A hockey player with excellent eye-hand coordination. The man can routinely stop a puck flying at him over eighty miles an hour, while wearing skates
and
more pads than the Michelin Man. You’d think he’d be able to teach me how to sink a simple layup.” Jana frowned. “I tried hockey, remember? It’s too many things at once. Skating
and
trying to stay upright
and
trying to hit a ball with a stick? I can’t do any of that individually yet, much less combined. So I went for something more straightforward.” She pointed her Snapple bottle at Lucy. “And, more important, something that can be played in sneakers and shorts. Put the ball in the net. It just shouldn’t be that hard.”
    After a “there, there” pat to Jana’s shoulder, Lucy went back to unpacking school supplies. One thing she loved about her best friend was that, while Jana might be quick to boil—a much-hated redhead cliché that she nevertheless owned up to—she simmered down just as fast. “I agree with you, if it makes any difference,” Lucy offered. “About the syndication thing. I like your columns. You’re not condescending, and you have the kind of style and energy in your writing that can make even fellow uncoordinated losers like me read the sports page. Well, a column of it, anyway.” She glanced over her shoulder at Jana, who’d turned back to the computer terminal. “Of course, you’re no Christine Brennan, but—”
    “I have deadly aim and a whole box of Crayolas within easy reach,” Jana reminded Lucy, never looking away from the screen as she casually clicked through posts.
    Lucy snorted. “Deadly aim. Right.”
    “All I have to do is aim for the chalkboard and I could nail you in the back of the head with no problem. Trust me.”
    Lucy grinned and went back to stocking tempera paint and brushes in the locking overhead cabinet, well away from the ever-questing fingers of her next batch of heathens. She’d given up on the honor system last year after coming back from a quick hallway consultation with the principal to find Billy Cantrell drinking Sunshine Yellow, straight up, no twist. Fellow classmate Doug “The Instigator” Blackwell had convinced him it would make him fly. Doug was her prime