Shark Bait (The Grab Your Pole Series) Read Free Page B

lips and she was waving with the other. Shit. I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t put any makeup on after all…I’d just end up looking like a clichéd raccoon before the short, five-minute drive to school was over.

2.

    Insert Choice Expletive Here

    Crossing the street to school with a herd of other kids whose parents dropped them off like my dad had with me, I felt not so much like cattle, but a black sheep. I know most of my trepidation about not fitting in with other kids is only in my head, after all, I do fill the requisite teenager status, but there are just so many of them and they all seem like they know each other. They might not all be friends, a perfect example – and one totally responsible for “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N’ Roses blaring in my head now – is the small group of girls yelling at each other on the front lawn of the campus. But, at least they still know each other. I mean seriously, how am I supposed to break into an established group that will accept me as one of their own? I really need to do that, too, if I want to survive my high school experience without needing therapy when it’s over. Looking at the somewhat defined cliques around me, I figure that if I don’t pick the right group, I’ll end up needing professional help anyway.
    I don’t really care about being popular per se, not that I’d shun the attention, but it has to be good attention, you know? Not the kind that comes from tripping, dropping your stuff all over the quad, and falling flat on your face. No lie; this is what I’m thinking about when a kid next to me does exactly that. And everyone starts laughing.
    “Oh my gosh! Are you okay?” I asked and bent down to help gather all the papers escaping his binder. I’m also pretty pissed again. I mean the nerve of all the kids who are laughing and pointing…how would they feel if it were one of them? Mean people just suck.
    “Yeah, I’m good. Thanks,” he answered and took the papers from me.
    His name is Paul Matthison. How do I know that, you ask? Well, I read it upside down on a page of his physics homework. “Hi. I’m Camie. I’m new.” This is as good a time as any, right? It’s too bad Paul isn’t at all cute.
    “Oh. Yeah, hi. My name’s Paul,” he said awkwardly.
    He looked embarrassed and then his face flushed even brighter when someone over by “the blue stage” yelled, “Hey new girl! Be careful, Paulitis is contagious!” and a new chorus of vicious laughter spewed forth.
    I was trying to screw up my courage to holler some suitable profanity mixed with a nice string of one hundred dollar words from my extensive vocabulary at the offending crowd, but I should’ve heeded their warning instead. As we shuffled ahead, I hooked the toe of one of my sandals on a crack in the pavement and pitched forward. I would’ve for sure done a very graceful faceplant but a hand firmly grabbed my arm to keep me from flying to the ground. I was so grateful to him that I was about to throw my arms around Paul’s neck and hug him in front of God and everyone—including the disdainful gaggle of teens that would condemn me to the bottom of the social barrel for sure if I did. I turned to face him and realized with a sizzling jolt of over-active and under-used hormones, it wasn’t Paul who was deserving of my intended, full-body expression of thanks.
    WHOA. Insert choice expletive here_____, because I got nothin’. In fact, I consciously told myself to close my mouth and then I surreptitiously checked my chin for slobber.
    “Hey Paul, you forgot this back there,” the most gorgeous real-life guy I’ve ever seen in all my fifteen years and nine months of life said, brushing against me and causing my skin to tingle as he handed a beat up Isaac Asimov paperback to Paul. Honestly, I imagine that’s what a lightning rod might feel like when it’s struck.
    I’m gonna take a minute here because you seriously need to understand how magnificent this guy