Miss Match Read Free

all about fun and games? Who ever heard of a teacher who makes his students actually work on the first day ofschool? While he yammers on, I keep looking out the window. Not that there’s anything interesting happening in the juniper bush out there, but if I tilt my head just so, I have an excellent peripheral view of The Hot New Guy.
    My faith in the minute hand is restored when the bell rings and we all gather our folders and backpacks. “Go directly to the gym for the back-to-school assembly,” Mr. Foley calls over the din.
    I look for The Hot New Guy in the hall. (I’ll just call him THNG until I figure out his name.) But, apparently, the swarm of high schoolers has swallowed him whole. Any other day I’d skip the gaudy spectacle of school spirit otherwise known as the pep rally, but Maddie’s been working really hard on her routine, and what kind of sister would I be to miss her debut as varsity cheerleader? And since THNG is new and naive and everything, he’ll probably be at the pep rally. Not that I’m stalking him.
    Squinting, I leave the fluorescent-lit hallway and enter the sunshiny brightness of the gymnasium. The freshly buffed wooden court gleams, and a collage of hand-painted banners scream Snowcrest Rams Rule! and SHS is #1! from the walls. The enormous room is buzzing with first-day-of-school exuberance.
    “Sasha! Over here!”
    Twisting around, I spot Yasmin waving frantically from the tip-top of the bleachers. As usual she’s dressed to thrill, her first-day-of-school ensemble consisting of pin-striped trouser shorts and a red satin wraparound top à la Hilary Duff at the Teen Choice Awards.
    I muscle my way up the steps and “excuse me, pardon me, ouch !” my way to her side. “Why do you always have to sit in the nosebleed section?” I ask, slightly out of breath. How she climbed all those stairs in three-inch heels, I’ll never know.
    “’Cause I get to scam all the hot guys,” she answers, not even caring that the boys sitting around us are all listening in. She tucks her shiny black hair behind a thoroughly adorned ear and says, “Oh my God, Sasha. You look darling. Where’d you get that skirt?”
    I have to look to remember what I’m wearing. Right. It’s Tommy Hilfiger, and it flares out a little on the bottom. The flare part makes my thighs look a little less…well, a little less . “Maddie’s closet,” I say. “But it falls off of her, so she bequeathed it to me.” Sure, I can fit into a few of Maddie’s sweatshirts and shoes, but it’s not every day I can say I’m wearing something of hers. I should be psyched about scoring a brand-new, this-season skirt, but what I wouldn’t give to be the Skinny Sister for once.
    Yas nods understandingly. “Yeah, that super-stretchy denim can be totally misleading. She should’ve bought one two sizes smaller than what she normally wears.” Then she faces forward and says, “Oh, look. It’s starting!”
    First, the student body is treated to the procession of teachers and teachers’ aides, who march solemnly across the court and file into the front few rows. Next, this year’s starched-and-pressed student council parades in, treating their subjects to a sequence of waves, thumbs-up, fist pumps, and one particularly jarring fingers-in-mouth whistle. I feel a headache coming on. And when the marching band makes its big entrance, banging and clanging out something that sounds roughly like the Snowcrest High School fight song, I wonder: Can a headache spread to one’s whole body?
    Yasmin elbows me and gestures (not verysubtly) at a potential hottie. He’s sitting on the ground level, so it’s not like I could see what he looks like even if he were facing us. But the back of his head looks pretty cute, so I smile and nod, wishing there were a volume control on the band. Yasmin bites her lower lip as that I’m gonna get him gleam settles in her exotic eyes.
    The JV cheerleaders take center stage in their new black-and-red