What Happens Next Read Online Free PDF Page A

wrong door, the door to a pantry, and interrupt a couple of lovebirds in the early stages of molesting one another.
    “God. Creep much, Ginger Bitch?” the girl says, yanking her top down.
    It’s my fellow cheerleader and archnemesis, Starsha Lexington. Ginger Bitch is her favorite name for me these days.
    Oh, how Starsha Lexington hates me. And not just because I bumped Cameron Fitzpatrick from the cheerleading squad. Starsha’s hatred of me dates back to the first week of kindergarten, when I was playing Food Channel Hostess in the play kitchen. I must have looked like I was having too good of a time, because she tried to take over my cooking show, and when I wouldn’t let her, she grabbed me by the hair. I grabbed her back and we went careening into the toy refrigerator, all the fake plastic vegetables and dishes spilling everywhere. We both started crying, were sent to opposing time-out corners, and glowered at each other from across the room.
    Not much has changed. Starsha glowers at me and I glower back. She and Tate have lipstick smeared all over their mouths and chins.
    “Eck, gross,” I mumble, and shut the door.
    I get to the basement and survey the landscape. Misery sets in when I realize how my night’s going to play out from here. Some senior boys are shooting pool and playing foosball in the lower rec room while a gaggle of junior girls, Kirsten and Paige included, buzz around them like bees at a honey pot. I slump into a papasan chair and sulk.
    I think about the Puberty Pep Talks—what my mom and Kirsten and Paige say about older guys appreciating girls who look different, fair-skinned redheads with curly hair. Big, tall, busty girls with meat on their bones.
    I look around the basement again. At all the boys who love all the girls with their perfectly straight, flatironed blond and brunette hair and perfectly proportioned bodies. Whatever maturity switch that is supposed to go off in boys’ brains about dating “the rarer breeds” has definitely not kicked in yet. While most boys are pretty nice to me in general now, none of them look at me in that attracted kind of way. Not the way Dax looked at me yesterday.
    As nine o’clock looms nearer, I get more and more anxious and more and more disgusted with the people around me. By ten after nine, an over-the-shoulder demon has popped out and is full-throttle duking it out with her angel counterpart on the other side.
    Go to the party!
    No, you can’t!
    Go to the party!
    But you musn’t!
    The evil side of me steps it up. The demon says, It’s nine fifteen and you’re still sittin’ here? Go big or go home, already.
    And that’s all I need. When I see that Kirsten and Paige are fully distracted, I slip back upstairs, grab my coat, and sneak out a side door. Off I go, into the night, to find my Prince Charming.
    After about ten minutes of walking, my phone starts popping off like the Fourth of July. Kirsten and Paige are texting the hell out of me.
    U get back here!
    Im going 2 kill u!
    Sid 4 real
    pleez?:)
    Then, finally: ur a Br@ dont b 2 L8 xxoo K & Pg
    I text Kirsten back: Unlock the back door 4 me <3 u guys xxoo Sid
    When I finally find Snowbird Trail, it’s already nine thirty, but I can see from a distance that something is off. No loud music, no cars. No sign with a big arrow and the words college party this way! It is just a dark, quiet condo, nestled among some trees with other dark, quiet condos.
    Then it hits me.
    I’ve screwed up the address.
    Or, even worse, I’ve fallen for the classic fake-out. Only instead of a fake phone number, I got an entire fake invite and fake address. I turn around to go back, my dreams dashed, when I hear someone calling to me. It’s him.
    “Hey, stranger! I thought you were blowing me off!”
    I smile widely in the darkness. Blow this Adonis dreamboat off? Not a chance.
    I make my way down the walkway and up the front steps and sit down next to him—not too close, not too far—on a wooden porch