How Not to Spend Your Senior Year Read Free Page B

though it seemed a pretty safe bet that making a fool of myself would somehow be involved.
    â€œHow do you even know where it is?” I asked, my tone aggressive. “What if it’s nowhere near where you have to be?”
    At this, the student behind me decided he’d waited long enough. He gave a quickshove. An action that sent me right back into Alex Crawford’s arms.
    â€œIt doesn’t make a difference,” Alex said.
    My brain struggled for most of the rest of the day, but even then, I think it knew that my heart had won.

    â€œYou’ll like Drama,” Alex promised a couple of hours later. We were walking across a wide swath of green lawn that separated the school’s Little Theater from the main classroom building. “Mr. Barnes, the teacher, is great. He makes the whole thing really interesting and fun. Even the performing part isn’t too humiliating.”
    â€œGee, that’s a relief.”
    On the far side of Alex, I heard a snort of amusement and knew it had come from the third member of our group, a girl named Elaine Golden.
    I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Elaine. She’d shown up with Alex a couple of times as he’d walked me from one class to another. I had to figure either Alex had asked her to do this, hoping we’d become friends, or she’d tagged along of her ownfree will, determined to keep an eye on him. It was obvious they were tight, though equally obvious that they weren’t a couple. The vibe between them just wasn’t quite right.
    If ever there was a person whose name suited her perfectly, it was Elaine. Everything about her was sort of . . . golden. She was tall, with hazel eyes and a head of softly waving gold-blonde hair. Even her skin looked vaguely tan, at a time of year when practically everybody else in Seattle still looked like the inside of a mushroom.
    â€œActually, Alex is correct,” Elaine said now. “Even if he expressed himself in a completely pathetic way.”
    Alex made a face at her. “I get no respect,” he sighed.
    â€œWho ran your incredibly successful election campaign?” Elaine asked sweetly.
    â€œWho ran unopposed?” Alex inquired.
    â€œOh, that,” Elaine said.
    One of the things I’d discovered during the course of the day was just how big a BMOC Alex Crawford truly was. He’d been class president every year since he’dbeen a freshman. As a senior, he was considered such a shoe-in for student body president that he’d run unopposed. After graduation, he was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps and study law at Harvard, or so a girl with the unbelievable-yet-apparently-true name of Khandi Kayne had informed me at morning break.
    This was right before she further informed me she was taking Alex to the girl-ask-boy dance that Friday night. A thing which went a long way toward explaining why my strong instinct had been not to turn my back on her.
    â€œJust so long as you’ve finished the unit on Shakespeare,” I said as Elaine, Alex, and I neared the theater door. We’d go in through the lobby, Alex had explained, but class was actually held in the auditorium.
    â€œI had an English teacher my sophomore year who used to make us read it aloud in class. I was completely hopeless. My tongue kept getting all tangled up.”
    â€œIn that case, I really hate to break this to you. . . . ” Elaine began.
    I stopped short. “Please tell me that you’re joking.”
    â€œI’m joking,” Elaine said obligingly. “Unfortunately for you, I’m also lying.”
    Fabulous, I thought, just as Alex opened the Little Theater door and ushered us through it with a definitely Shakespearean bow.

    My first Drama class at Beacon was either:
    a) not so bad, or
    b) worse than I could possibly have imagined.
    Depending entirely on which portion of the period we’re talking about.
    It started off