Read Dedication for Free Online Page B

motion, Jake’s angular face locks on mine, hair falling in his green eyes as he cocks his head, like Laura’s Lab when he’s watching a deer out the back window. And then it’s loud and fast again as I step into the crowded hallway, continuing on to…where? I look at the doors to the parking lot. Pouring April rain splatters the cement. I could just walk and keep walking. Instead I find myself carried by the tide up the stairs to Social Studies.
    “That’s her.”
    “She likes Jake Sharpe.”
    “Katie likes Jake Sharpe, wants to marry him and have his babies.”
    I find myself at my seat and slide my shaking legs under the attached desk. Mrs. Sandman comes in and the overheads flicker on.
    “Katie wants to lick Jake Sharpe’s wiener,” someone whispers in the row behind me. I see the rest of my life at this school playing out as if I’m Rocky Dennis while Jeanine gets to stroll in here every day with maxi pads stuck to her face and no one even notices—“Lick it, lick it—”
    “Mrs. Sandman?”
    “Yes, Katie?” She places her coffee mug down and peers through her glasses at her lesson plan.
    “I’d like to make an announcement.” I would? A picture of Krystle Carrington appearing in my head, I feel myself step onto the seat of my orange plastic chair and then onto the desk as if about to correct a rumor campaign whirling around the grand ball. Then I’m tossing my hair back over my imaginary beaded shoulder pads. “Yes, so, um, I believe you have all heard that I like Jake Sharpe. I just wanted to put an end to the rumors. Yes, I, Katie Hollis, like Jake Sharpe. So, there you go. Now we can all get back to our lives.” Okay. I step down, one Bass loafer at a time.
    Ms. Sandman blinks at me. The class blinks at me. I pull at my rugby shirt and retake my seat, noting I have not dropped dead, and not yet sure if this is a good thing.

    “No. Way,” Laura’s voice lowers.
    “What?” I ask, pulling the Gruyère off my sandwich and rolling it tightly before biting off an end, enjoying that people have finally stopped staring at me like at any moment I might hop on the furniture and announce I like them.
    “Your Jake Sharpe is sitting with Jason and those other jocks.” Laura darts her head at the cafeteria table of top guns a few feet away.
    I fold the rest of my cheese roll into my mouth. “Not mine. We’ve never even said hi.”
    “He was yours enough to stand on a desk and claim him.”
    “That’s not how it was supposed to go in my head. And that was days ago and I’d appreciate if we could all drop it. Besides, don’t forget whose scandal of the week I knocked off the charts, Ms. Malaria.”
    She shrugs, working her way through an apple with slightly more expertise. “I just thought you’d be interested to know that since your big announcement he’s been supremely promoted. Your dramatics were apparently an escalator to popular.”
    “So that’s why it feels like I’m being stood on.”
    We munch as the lunchtime screams and giggles around us bounce off the mint-green walls, ascending, our new vocab word, to a deafening level. Having avoided looking even in his general direction for the past four days, I let my eyes wander casually back to the rowdiest table. Sure enough, spastic, whistles-to-himself-in-the-halls Jake Sharpe sips out of a silver Capri Sun between Benjy Conchlin and Todd Rawley.
    Laura squints while carefully sucking apple skin from her braces. “Doesn’t it look like he got a haircut?”
    I glance over one more time, using my paper bag as cover. “I guess, yes, he seems, more…more something.” More in color. Like if River Phoenix had a younger brother. “I don’t know! It’s not like I study him or anything. I’ve just been trying to live him down.”
    Jeanine stops in front of our table, pushing open her milk container, her spiked hair looking extra porcupiny today. The girls around us fall silent, looking from her to me. I take a breath and try Mom’s