Read Maybe I Will for Free Online

Don’t be mad.” They say March comes in like a lion. It wasn’t snowing or anything, but it sure felt cold and ominous. Troy spent the weekend working on cars at his uncle’s shop, and I spent the weekend loading music and hundreds of apps onto my new phone.
    On Monday we all pretended like nothing was wrong. Hamilton posted the parts as promised. I got Peter Pan, and Shanika was Tiger Lily. We both showed up last period to get a jump start on rehearsals.
    â€œI haven’t seen you in study hall before,” I said. “Who’s letting you cut class to be here?” I started pawing through the packets of information and lines for each actor and pulled out ours.
    Shanika shook her head as I handed her the Tiger Lily packet. “Not class. I just come to school in the mornings and work in the afternoons.”
    â€œAnd your boss is letting you off for the musical?” It seemed too good to be true. “Where do you work?”
    â€œAt my dad’s taekwondo place.”
    â€œMust be nice,” I replied. We started shuffling through our paperwork.
    Shanika laughed. “I’m not complaining.” She pulled out a Peter Pan-Tiger Lily duet. “Do you want to study our lines together or would you rather start with a song?”
    â€œLet’s start with a song.”
    The first two weeks of March passed quickly, but I could feel the lion still lurking. I spent less time with Troy and Cassie and lots of time rehearsing with Shanika. Finally, Cassie extended the olive branch and invited Troy and me to her house on Saturday afternoon. But we hadn’t been there an hour before Aaron showed up. I thought Troy was just going to leave, but instead he decided to pull Monte into Cassie’s garage and tinker under the hood.
    â€œI just need to adjust the idle,” he said. “Is it okay if I leave the garage door up so I don’t accidently die of carbon monoxide poisoning?”
    Aaron thought that was funny, and Cassie smacked him for laughing. “Definitely leave the door up,” she said to Troy.
    With Troy out in the garage, I was feeling pretty uncomfortable until Cassie asked me about the musical. It wasn’t long, though, before I was talking more about Shanika than about Peter Pan. “Once the musical’s over, I’m thinking about taking up taekwondo,” I confessed. “New York’s a big city. If I’m going to live there someday, it wouldn’t hurt to know a little self-defense.”
    The words “self-defense” caught Aaron’s attention. It was like he saw me for the first time. “Let me show you some wrestling moves for self-defense,” he said. He started talking about postureand balance and take-downs and was totally showing off for Cassie. I wasn’t impressed, but at least we were both making an effort to get along for Cassie’s sake. Or so I thought.
    I can’t remember now if Aaron sent Cassie out into the kitchen to get us something to drink or if she went out on her own, but as soon as she walked out of the room, Aaron pinned me.
    He looked me straight in the eyes. “Try to get up.”
    I struggled, but I couldn’t break free from his hold. Aaron-the-ape-man was on top of me and wasn’t about to let me up. He reeked of Axe cologne. His hot breath wrapped itself around my neck and sent a chill down my spine. I couldn’t breathe, and was just about to say so when he put his hand over my mouth. All of a sudden I realized I could feel his big “banana” on my thigh like the big, bad wolf beating on my door, shouting, “Let me in!”
    My heart pumped furiously, and my eyes began filling with tears. I thrashed around trying to fight him off, but he was too strong. I couldn’t get him off me. I could feel myself starting to panic. I stopped struggling and just tried to breathe. Cassie was right there. Nothing was going to happen.
    But I was wrong again. Aaron