The Mosts Read Online Free PDF Page A

through her long blond hair. She hip-shook Fergie out of the mirror on the inside of my locker door.
    “Hey!” Fergie complained, but took out a compact and lipstick and refreshed her sparkly pink-red lips.
    “So you can’t even imagine what it would feel like to be on that list?” I asked Caro.
    She looked at me as if I were wearing a bad shirt. “No, I can’t . Because I’d never be on it. No one has to be. People choose to look the way they do.” She pointed her pale pink–tipped finger at Maya Blear, who was coming clearly uncomfortably down the hall, both emotionally and physically, her thighs audibly rubbing together. “She doesn’t have to be two hundred pounds. There’s something called a diet . She chooses to stuff her face with fries at lunch. Yesterday, I heard her ask for cheese on her fries! I eat carrot sticks for a reason. And what about this Fashion Don’t?” she added, upping her chin at Jen Mercer. “No one forced her to buy that ugly weird shirt. She could have chosen a nicer one. I’m sure Wal-Mart has better choices than that.”
    Fergie snickered.
    “I think it’s more complicated than you’re making it out to be,” I told Caro as we headed down the hall to the cafeteria. The crowds in the hallway parted for us, as always, something that had taken me months to get used to when I first became part of their group. There was the usual gushing of “Hi!” and “I love your shoes!” and “I hope you can make the party!” I was the only one of us who smiled back. Caro and Fergie ignored everyone. And that was what made them even cooler.
    “Yeah, we have choices,” I told Caro. “But a lot of stuff gets in the way.”
    “Yeah, if you’re a loser,” Caro countered. “Sam sprained his ankle really bad and still finished the game last weekend—and won it for us. He made a good choice. It’s all about choice.”
    The guy himself, his sandy-blond hair under a Red Sox cap, arrived at the cafeteria from the other direction at the same time we did. His best friends, CJ—who everyone called Ceej—Tate, and Harry, were with him. The crowds parted for them, too. They were all good-looking and junior varsity captains of everything at Freeport Academy. Sam was actually nice . Ceej was okay, but Tate (Most Buff) and Harry (Most Hilarious) could be total jerks. Either Sam or Thom always won Most Beautiful and Most Popular. But they didn’t seem to care about the labels, not the way my friends and I did.
    Sam smiled. He had the warmest eyes, and they twinkled. His gaze lingered on me.
    Caro positioned herself in front of me and linked arms with him. “Lead the way,” she told him. If he led the way to a utility closet and stuck his hands up her top, then went back to the caf and ate a hamburger as though nothing had happened, that would be fine with her.
    I had to admit—if I weren’t crazy about Thom, who was still my boyfriend, three thousand miles away or not, I would be totally into Sam Fray. For all the reasons Caro liked him and more. He was different from most guys. He really was nice. Once, when Mac had sprained his wrist, Sam had stayed all day on a gorgeous Saturday just to help Mac and my mom usher the cows into pasture, when he could have joined all of us at the Coffee Connection before heading to the beach.
    A few days ago, while my mother had gone on and on during breakfast about the cost of protein to add to the cow feed this year, I’d thought about how wrong it was that a nice, gorgeous guy like Sam would never have a girlfriend at Freeport Academy while Caro wanted him.
    That was power.
    “So, have you heard from Thom?” Sam asked when he returned to our lunch table with his tray. His friends slid in beside him. As always, girls on one side, boys on the other. Caro liked it set up that way so that she could be on display. She wore a pale pink tank top that accentuated her breasts, her tan, and everything else about her perfect body.
    “Like a hundred times since he