Read Shutout for Free Online Page B

flirty laugh that sounded nothing like her. I got up to them and she was like, “Oh, hey. Guys, this is my best friend, Amanda!”
    I raised my hand in greeting and said, as brightly as I could manage, “Hey!”
    â€œâ€™Sup,” they mumbled, and faded into the crowd.
    Lena was beaming. “Wow!” she said. “The guys here are so nice!” Yeah, unless you’ve got toothpick legs. “Are you ready?”
    â€œAs ready as I’ll ever be.”
    â€œOkay. Let’s do it.” And we walked into school together. We both had the letter with our homeroom assignments in our hands. I was in 319, she was in 348.
    Strangely, these turned out to be right across the hall from each other, which was good because we could stand in the hall together being terrified until the bell rang. Well, I was terrified, anyway. I exchanged quiet greetings with the other JV girls I saw, and once in a while a junior or senior girl would walk by and greet Lena with a big hug or a hearty “Have a great day!”
    This happened because the third floor, where our homerooms were, was also the home of the seniors’ lockers and some of the juniors’ lockers. I guess because somebody thought that having your locker and homeroom on the same floor might make your life too easy or something.
    Finally the bell rang and we said goodbye and went into our homerooms. After the tedious business of calling everybody’s name, my homeroom teacher, Mr. Knarr, an art teacher with a goofy smile, said, “Okay, I have a bunch of really boring stuff I’m supposed to read to you guys, but I’d just as soon skip that if it’s all the same to you. You got the handbook mailed to your house, so I don’t think we need to go over every single rule, right? And you’ve used combination locks before, right, so I don’t need to go over that, though I probably should tell you that the school can cut your lock off and search your locker without cause at any time, so if you have any . . . interesting hobbies, you might not want to leave the evidence lying around in your locker.”
    The members of the Future Burnouts of America club laughed, and at that moment, somebody’s cell phone went off. Okay, I had been mocked publicly and separated from my best friend and kicked off the good soccer team, but at least my phone didn’t start playing a song from
High School Musical 3
in the middle of homeroom. So I guess it really could be worse.
    The girl whose phone it was—this heavy, pale girl with frizzy, mousy hair—turned purple with embarrassment and started digging in her purse.
    â€œBless you!” Mr. Knarr said, and people smiled. “Thosefall allergies are killer. I too sound like Zac Efron when I sneeze.” Everybody laughed, and the purple girl faded to red and looked like she wanted to disappear under her desk instead of die on the spot, so I guess he handled it pretty well.
    â€œOn an unrelated note, you may have read in the handbook the sensible and completely enforceable rule that cellular phones are not allowed in school and are subject to confiscation. The school cannot search your person without cause, though, so as long as your phones are invisible and set not to ring, the one or two of you who brought phones to school”—everybody laughed—“should be able to avoid getting in trouble.
    â€œNow, for the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Your schedules.” He handed everybody’s out, then said, “After the name of the class is a one or two. One is for honors classes, two is for regular classes. Take a few minutes to ponder your schedules, and then we’ll talk again.”
    I pondered mine. I couldn’t help noticing the “2” after my math class. So that meant I was in “regular” math. Since, according to Conrad, something like 60 percent of the school is in honors classes, because that’s just