Socially Awkward Read Online Free PDF Page B

always so much better at that crafty stuff than I am…”
     
    “Okay,” I said, stretching out the last syllable. I knew that second shoe was going to drop at any moment.
     
    “But I know you’re really busy, so I wouldn’t want to impose. Or, at least, I wouldn’t want to feel like you were helping me for nothing, you know?”
     
    “Uh huh…” I turned my eyes back to my laptop under the guise of working. In reality, I just kept clicking back and forth between two open windows on my screen, waiting for her to finish her belabored point.
     
    “So maybe we could do some sort of… I don’t know… talent exchange?”
     
    I snapped my laptop shut quietly, raising my eyes to her once again. Claire was leaning against my clean desk, arms crossed, and apparently lost in her thoughts. As transparent as her efforts were, I really loved her right then for how hard she was trying.
     
    “Fine, Claire. You can help me.”
     
    “ Help you what? ” She blinked, playing dumb.
     
    I narrowed my eyes at her.
     
    “Okay, okay,” she caved, looking relieved and truly pleased. “You won’t regret this, I promise. Just be ready to go at 6 am tomorrow. I’m picking you up and we’re getting started right away.”
     
    “Tomorrow? It’s Saturday,” I protested.
     
    Claire was already halfway out the front door. She turned to me, hands on her hips. “Calories don’t take the weekends off, Jen . And neither do we.”
     

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    So in the morning, I found myself held prisoner by my sister .
     
    “You’re going to love this place,” Claire said, for the fourth time, as she pulled into a parking spot in front of a local gym.
     
    “Tom’s Workou t World?” I was a bit skeptical , unable to stop myself from mocking the chosen title of this hole-in-the-wall facility. Located in a rundown strip mall, where his only neighbors were a dry cleaning service and a pet grooming salon—neither of which had any customers at that particular moment , or possibly in the last five years —Tom’s place was more like a workout hut and less like a world .
     
    The sign was cracked, for starters, and the storefront window appeared never to have been introduced to a squeegee. I was less worried about getting a good workout during my visit than I was about the risk of contracting a foreign illness from the place.
     
    “You seriously workout here?” I asked my sister. I couldn’t quite bring myself to get out of the car. Claire, on the other hand, had already parked, turned off the engine, tied her hair into a neat ponytail, and fished our gym bags out of the back seat. She thrust mine into my lap with deliberate force.
     
    “Come on, Complainy Pants. Let’s get your sweat on.”
     
    “I hope that’s all I get on me…” I muttered the words under my breath as we both popped out of Claire’s little Civic, but she heard me. I wish my sister didn’t have super-human ears sometimes. Lord knows, I wouldn’t have heard her , not with my damaged hearing nerves .  And because life is so unfair, I got a punch in the arm. “Oww!”
     
    I scowled, reluctantly falling into step beside her as we neared the building. My instincts told me to stop moving, but my arm was already sore. Why challenge Claire when it was obviously so pointless?
     
    “No more whining. I will giv e Tom permission to torture you for every complaint you utter.”
     
    “And why would he listen to you?” I snapped at her.
     
    “No reason.”
     
    I caught Claire’s shifty look and raised my eyebrows. She looked away, somewhere off into the distance. Interesting.
     
    The inside of Tom’s Workout World couldn’t have been any more different from what I expected . From the parking lot, you’d never believe there were flat panel televisions, state-of-the-art exercise machines, and a staff of at least five super-hot trainers in here. Maybe they left the windows grimy on purpos e, to keep petty criminals and P eeping Toms at bay. Ha!