Top Ten Uses for an Unworn Prom Dress Read Online Free PDF Page A

with some sort of jumbled logo on the front, a loose pair of board shorts, and high-tops. But it wasn't until he climbed out of his car at the gas station that I discovered he was wearing navy blue boxers as well. With little diamonds on them.
    More than I wanted to know. Way more.
    So why, when he slid back into the car, did I meet his eye and ask about the print shop? Almost like I cared about his personal life?
    He gave me one of his usual bored scowls and merged into traffic. “My uncle owns the place. I help out every now and then.” I must have looked as surprised as I felt, because he shrugged a shoulder and continued, “Senior year's not that hard. I've done my SATs, and most of the honors courses are behind me. Thought I'd make some pocket money for college.”
    My thoughts must have still been all over my face, because while pulling onto the freeway ramp, he answered the question that I was fighting not to say out loud. “It'll be nice not to have to hit my dad up for
everything
.”
    Okay. So it made sense—slightly.
    As we continued north, my stomach began to resemble the hard, sickening ball that I used to feel on Halloween after a long day of eating candy. Which was totally ironic, because I hadn't eaten a chocolate bar since Dad and his mini—Almond Joys had vacated our house.
    I did, however, accept a stick of Juicy Fruit when Jared pulled a pack from his glove compartment. My steely mouth needed moistening—and something to do. Funny, though … I couldn't remember ever seeing Jared chew gum before.
    “What's with the gum?” I had to ask.
    “Somebody left it in my car after we left the daycare center job last weekend.”
    “Out in Sepulveda?” I asked. People from wood shop and several other clubs had donated supplies and energy to help rebuild play equipment lost in a fire.
    He nodded. “A bunch of people rode with me.”
    I imagined that with this Camaro, he'd had to turn riders away. And from Alison's stories about her rule-following brother, he had stayed to the legal limit of one person per seat belt. He wasn't the type to take unnecessary risks, or put himself in the spotlight in any way, for that matter. Like last year, following the spring show, he had gotten a standing ovation. But not for onstage action—for the scenery he'd sawed and painted for the production. Alison told me later that he'd played it down, but their parents had been thrilled.
    Parents were like that. At least, the ones who remembered you were alive were.
    Which reminded me, I had one more teeny, tiny favor to ask from Jared. “It would be nice,” I said, and tried not to wince, “if you came inside my dad's house with me. He'll sort of expect that, since you drove me all the way there.”
    He paused for a long moment. “What, he doesn't realize you're trading your favors for this ride?”
    A smile gleamed in his eye but didn't keep me from giving his upper arm a punch. Which was harder than I'd expected. His muscle, that is. Maybe those saws and hammers were heavier than they looked.
    “Ow,” he said, tightening his hold on the steering wheel. “Remind me not to spread down-and-dirty rumors about you.”
    I knew he was joking, but he was less irritatingthan when he treated me like a kid—so you take what you can get, right?
    And I
had
paid him. Thirty bucks more than covered things.
    “So,” Jared said. “After the hello? I, what, disappear? I mean, you need time alone to talk about … whatever it is you need to talk about, right?”
    I nodded. And looked out the window at the ivycovered freeway walls, the rolling brown hills in the distance. I knew I needed to fess up—I'd probably need him to take me to the bank afterward. It would be so much easier to just get it all done at once.
    But Jared was a rich kid. And not a heart-on-his-sleeve rich kid like his sister, who helped organize the school's Thanksgiving food drive, and who one time gave a homeless woman a twenty-dollar bill out of her