The Party Read Free Page A

pinched her. Sara sat up with a bolt. “Holy Moses,” she gasped. Then she saw the stares, the smirks. Unfazed, she calmly leaned back in her chair and picked up her pen as if to take notes, saying, “Could you please repeat the question, Mr. Bark?”
    “I didn’t ask a question, Sara.”
    Sara stifled a yawn. “Good.”
    “But I’ll ask one now. Were you awake through any of the videotape?”
    “I got the highlights.”
    “I’m glad. Tell me, what was your gut reaction while watching the bombs explode?”
    Sara smiled slowly. “I thought it was neat.”
    Mr. Bark shook his head. “You might think you are being funny, but I can assure you that you are—”
    “No, no,” Sara interrupted. “I’m telling you exactly how I felt. The whole time I was watching it, before I nodded off, I was thinking, Wow.”
    Mr. Bark grinned in spite of himself. “Granted, Sara, the visual effects were outstanding. But didn’t the wholesale destruction of our civilization upset you?”
    “No.”
    “Come on, be serious. I had girls crying when I showed this tape in fifth period yesterday.”
    “Mr. Bark,” Sara replied with a straight face, “when I was watching that part where the bomb exploded outside that university, I honestly thought to myself, ‘Why, those lucky kids. They won’t have to go to school anymore.’”
    The class burst out laughing. Mr. Bark finally gave up. He tried to dig up more heartfelt testimonials from the less bizarre minded, and while he did so, Jessica noticed a handsome blond fellow sitting in the corner. She had to fight not to stare. What kind of place was this Tabb? First there was Clair Hilrey, who belonged in Playboy , and now there was this hunk. It was a wonder that they couldn’t put together a halfway decent football team with all these great genes floating around. She poked Sara again.
    “Who’s that in the corner?” she whispered.
    “The football quarterback,” Sara whispered back.
    “What’s his name?”
    “He hasn’t got one. But his jersey number is sixteen.”
    “Tell me, dammit.”
    “William Skater, but I call him Bill. Pretty pretty, huh?”
    “Amazing. Do you know if he has a girlfriend?,,
    “I’ve seen him hanging out with this cheerleader named Clair.”
    “God, I hate this school.”
    “Miss Hart?” Mr. Bark called.
    “Yes, sir?”
    He wanted to know about her feelings on radiation, and of course, she told him she thought it was just awful stuff. When the class was over, Jessica did her best to catch Bill’s eye, but he wasn’t looking.
    I’ve been here less than two hours. I can’t be getting a crush on someone already.
    She ditched Sara and trailed Bill halfway across campus. He had a great ass.
    The following period was the dread chemistry, and the teacher’s lecture on molecular reactions proved far harder to absorb than Mr. Bark’s on atomic explosions. This was definitely one class she wouldn’t be able to BS her way through.
    Toward the middle of the period, they started on the first lab of the year. Jessica ended up with a quiet Hispanic girl named Maria Gonzales for a partner. They hardly had a chance to talk, but she struck Jessica as the serious type. Jessica just hoped she was smart and took excellent notes. She wondered if Michael Olson really was a wizard at science. It would be asking too much, she supposed, to hope William Skater was.
    Maybe Bill will be in another one of my classes.
    Break came next. Before leaving for school that morning, Jessica had spoken to another friend of hers, Polly McCoy—Alice’s older sister—filling her in on everything that had happened on her vacation. She had known Polly almost as long as she had Sara, although she was not nearly so close to Polly. A lot of their friendship was founded on simple geography; since they were kids they had lived only a few hundred yards apart; it was hard not to be friends with someone your own age who lived so close.
    Polly had what at best could be described as a