Free Lemonade Mouth Puckers Up by Mark Peter Hughes

like talking or celebrating. Ever have to pretend to be in a good mood when all you really want to do is crawl off somewhere and hide? That was me.
    I wanted to press my face into a pillow.
    I wanted to scream.
    I’ll admit it—there were even moments when I was close to crying.
    But I couldn’t. And since I couldn’t bring myself to talkabout the Mo stuff with anybody, I had to walk around with a fake smile as if everything was great. As if the whole world hadn’t just fallen to pieces in one giant mambo explosion named Rajeev.
    The next day wasn’t much better. I stayed home and watched TV. Mo called a couple of times, but I didn’t pick up. What would be the point? I saw what I saw, so what more was there to say?
    By Tuesday, though, after a James Bond marathon, I started to cool down. Something about the nonstop action and over-the-top crazy bad guys calmed my nerves. The world wasn’t really like that, and I guess a part of me wanted to believe I was overreacting about Mo, as if some green-skinned Jealousy Monster that fed on my insecurities had been whispering in my ear and making me nuts. Maybe I’d misinterpreted what I’d seen. Maybe if Mo and I talked this over she could clear everything up and we’d laugh about my stupid mistake.
Falling for Rajeev?
she’d ask.
Me? Ha-ha! Is that what you thought? Of course not, Charlie! That’s ridiculous!
    I didn’t know what the explanation might be, but there had to be one, right? Her parents had told her she needed to be nice to him, so maybe she had to pretend to have a great time dancing with him. Her arms around him. His around her.
    Yeah, that was probably it.
    Okay, so it was a long shot, but it was all I had.
    Anyway, it was time to bite the bullet and pay her a visit. My first step was to phone Stella, who was finally back from Philadelphia, and ask if she wanted to swing by Mo’s family’s store to say hi with me. I didn’t mention the dancing stuff oranything, I just figured that if Stella came too then it would make everything seem more casual.
    Fortunately, convincing Stella wasn’t hard.
    “Oh man, yes!” she said. “You have no idea what it was like road-tripping with my two little monkey stepbrothers—five hours each way, trapped in a car with Thing One and Thing Two. I gotta get away or I’ll explode. See you in ten minutes.”
    As Stella and I walked to the Banerjees’ store together, I secretly kept coaching myself on how I should act when I saw Mo. I told myself I wouldn’t get emotional. I was going to stay calm and we were going to talk, that was all. It was going to be okay.
    Problem was, it never occurred to me that Rajeev would be there with her.
    First thing I saw when we stepped into the store was the two of them sitting cross-legged on the floor together, all chummy and comfortable as they unpacked two big boxes of white rice onto the shelves. They looked like best buddies, like they belonged together. Right away my stomach turned to jelly. There weren’t any other customers at the time, and at the sound of the bell jingling Mo and Rajeev both looked up. They seemed surprised to see us, and for the briefest moment I felt weird vibes again, as if we’d caught them in the middle of something. I figured maybe they’d been having some hushed conversation, maybe sharing their deepest secrets with each other. I didn’t know.
    All I knew was that even after all the coaching I’d given myself, the Jealousy Monster was back. Only now instead of whispering it was screaming at the top of its lungs.
    “Oh, what a nice surprise!” Mo said, standing up. “Howwas your Fourth, Stella?” Stella and Rajeev hadn’t met yet so she introduced them, and then Mo said, all casual, “So, what’s going on, Charlie? I called you a bunch of times and you never called back. What have you been up to?”
    “I could ask you the same thing,” I said, still gripping my half-empty lemonade.
    There was another weird pause. I caught Rajeev and Mo