Parallel Parking Read Free Page B

Lina said. “All I could do was watch helplessly as he walked
     out of my life forever. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I dreamed about him every night for a week. Even now, whenever
     I go downtown, part of me is always keeping an eye out for him. But I never saw him again. And I have no way of ever finding
     him. He’s just… gone.”
    “That is so tragic,” Mads said.
    “There should be a way to find people like that,” Holly said. “Like a Missing Persons bulletin board or something.”
    “Did you ever see those ads at the back of the
Bay Reader?”
Lina said. The
Bay Reader
was a weekly alternative newspaper. “‘I Saw You’? People write in things like, ‘Girl with braids who works at Zola’s—you
     rock my world.”
    “Oh, yeah,” Mads said. “I love to read those. No one is ever looking for me, though.”
    “Me either,” Lina said. “Not yet, anyway….”
    “Maybe we could add a feature like that to the blog,” Mads said. They had started the Dating Game blog as a school project,
     but it kept growing. From advice columns to matchmaking quizzes to relationship diaries, it had become the love center of
     the Rosewood School for Alternative Gifted Education.
    “We could call it Missed Connections,” Lina said. “You could describe someone you saw in an ad on the site and hope they see
     it and answer you.”
    “Right,” Holly said. “A girl could post something like, ‘Boy who kicked a soccer ball into my face during gym on Friday—I
     want to get to know you.’”
    “‘Because I am insane,’” Mads added.
    “Or Martin could have written about Mads,” Lina said. “’Cute little dark-haired girl with baby face—’”
    “Hey!” Mads wasn’t fond of her baby face.
    Lina ignored the interruption. “‘—will you go to the dance with me?’”
    “It’ll be anonymous, just like ‘I Saw You,’ ” Mads said. “That way, if your crush doesn’t respond, nobody will know but you.
     You don’t have to face total public humiliation.”
    “It’s like an online secret admirer note,” Holly said.
    “Let’s do it,” Lina said. “For all the Martin Irigazzys out there.”

    Missed Connections
    Do you have a crush on someone from afar, but you don’t know his or her name? Did you bump into a cutie in the cafeteria line
     and want to get to know him or her better? Put an ad in Missed Connections, and get the answers you need! It’s anonymous,
     so if the object of your desire doesn’t want to have anything to do with you, no one will know. And you can always tell yourself
     he or she never saw the ad, so your ego doesn’t get completely crushed. Read Missed Connections every day to see if someone
     is looking for you!

3 Missed Connections
----
    To:     linaonme
    From: your daily horoscope
    HERE IS TODAY’S HOROSCOPE: CANCER: Your altruistic impulses surface today when you try to help someone who doesn’t ask for
     it. Serves them right.
----
    W hat do you think?” Holly asked Lina. “Should I tell her?”
    Lina was stunned. She and Holly walked out of their history class together, whispering. They hardly needed to, the halls were
     so noisy. Holly had texted Lina a brief summary of Sean’s behavior at Autumn’s party—basically, the kiss—and asked for advice.
     Lina was still reeling from the bomb Holly had just dropped.
    “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this earlier,” Lina said. “This happened almost a week ago!”
    Holly’s mouth twisted, a kind of facial squirming. “I know. I felt so weird about it, and I kept thinking it would go away,
     but it hasn’t. I keep thinking about him. It. What happened.”
    This will upset Mads
, Lina thought.
It has to
.
    “If you think about it, nothing really happened,” she said to Holly. They stopped by her locker. She put her history book
     away and got her driver’s ed notebook. Driver’s ed was next. She’d be seeing Mads in five minutes. She had to compose herself
     first. Mads could sniff