The Sweetest Thing Read Online Free PDF Page A

Meredith and Judith jumped to their feet, and the rest of the school was up about two seconds later, waving banners and yelling like crazy. The football players were running into the gym, throwing footballs back and forth. When Adam jogged in at the back of the line, the entire gym began chanting, “McGregor! McGregor!” Down there, under the lights of the gym, he looked graceful and capable, like he was totally destined to lead our team to victory.
    â€œCan you believe that guy’s only a freshman?”asked Jules, trying to make conversation with Meredith. “He must be one hell of a player.”
    â€œYeah.” She and Judith sighed dreamily. From the love-struck expressions on their faces, it was clear their crushes weren’t going away anytime soon. As the football team lined up and Adam flashed the crowd a smile that was charming, friendly, and totally at ease, I had to admit that I couldn’t really blame them.

CHAPTER 5
WHAT? NO BELLY DANCERS?
    After school I walked home to my town house on Perry Street in Greenwich Village, and with each step I took I got more and more worried about the whole Adam situation. Even if I was starting to understand why Meredith and Judith liked him, their weird competitiveness at the pep rally was definitely a bad sign. Their fight over Tony had sounded so awful, and that was back in middle school when they barely even saw the guy. But now they both had classes with Adam and saw him on a daily basis. What would happen if one of them ended up going out with him? Would they really just throw away their friendship over some guy? Maybe I was jumping the gun a little with all my worries, but hanging out with Meredith and Judith had made my transition to Stuy so fun and easy. I didn’t want anything to come between us, and I definitely didn’t want to ever have to choose one ofthem as a friend over the other. I had worked myself into a state of total anxiety by the time I reached my block, and I realized I really needed to talk to someone about it all. So instead of scaling the steps to my own house, I walked one house further and rang the buzzer. It was time to pay a visit to my best friend, Sara-Beth Benny.
    Unless you’ve been living in a bomb shelter since the late ’80s, you’ve heard of Sara-Beth Benny. She was the adorable star child of the hit show
Mike’s Princesses
, and since then, she’s been in a bunch of movies and on the covers of even more magazines. She’s totally terrified of the paparazzi. Over the years, she’s built up this whole collection of wigs and costumes and giant sunglasses to hide behind, and when we go out she’s always ducking behind parked cars, furniture, and potted plants.
    Back in September SBB moved out of her Upper East Side apartment because photographers kept ambushing her there and driving her even crazier. But before she finally moved into the enormous brown-stone right next to mine, she’d been living at my house, apartment-hunting and hiding from the paparazzi. SBB has been my best friend for a while now, but as much as I love her, I have to admit it was pretty stressful sharing a bedroom with her. It’s somuch more fun to have her next door—now I can just pop on over whenever I want to chat or just catch up on the details of her too-fabulous, too-exciting life.
    When SBB’s door finally swung open, an exhausted-looking man in dirty coveralls greeted me gruffly. “You Flan?” I nodded. He gestured over one shoulder with a paintbrush whose bristles were stained a metallic gold. “Her Majesty’s in there.”
    â€œThanks.” I hurried past him into the living room.
    â€œOh. My. God.” Ever since she moved in, Sara-Beth had been kind of neurotic about decorating her new town house, but she had taken it to an entirely new level. The downstairs looked more like a Lower East Side hookah bar at midnight than a home. The walls were covered with