Free 3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows by Ann Brashares

watched her go stumbling up the aisle. She hoped he wasn’t getting off here but was staying on to Dewey Beach or Bethany or Ocean City. It would be too awkward to face him outside the bus, to act like strangers or, alternatively, introduce him to her mom. She didn’t even turn around to find out. She kept her gaze rigidly ahead; her limbs were shaky and her heart thumping wildly.
    She felt like she was drunk and also underwater. She tried to shake her head to sober up. She saw her mother waiting in the car and tried to push herself back up through miles of heavy water to the air.
    What did you do? she asked herself, sucking in the moist, cool beach breeze. How did that just happen?
    She wished so much she could walk home, holding on to her heady buzz, rather than get into the car -with her mom and lose all of it. Would her mom see her flushed face and her shaking hands and know immediately that something was up? She felt like she was wearing her brain inside out.
    What were you thinking? she asked herself, but apparently herself didn’t feel much need to answer.
    “Hey Dia?”
    Polly made a point of catching her mother in the short window of time between -when she woke up and -when she left the house for her studio.
    Dia looked up from her large mug of coffee. Her eyes were still slightly crossed and baggy from sleep.
    “Are you pouncing? No pouncing.”
    That was a cardinal rule of the morning. Polly got up early and Dia slept late. By the time Dia got up, Polly was bursting -with pent-up conversation. It was hard for her to stay quiet as Dia stumbled through her morning routine.
    “No. I was … I -was just going to ask you something,” Polly said defensively. She rubbed her sock feet together under the kitchen table.
    “Okay. Fine.”
    “Could I go to modeling camp in Gaithersburg in late July?”
    “What?”
    “Modeling camp. It’s only half an hour away. I looked on the map. I can pay for most of it from babysitting. It’s just a day camp, nine to four Monday through Friday. And it’s only for two weeks. Several real supermodels went there.”
    “Modeling camp?”
    “Yes.” Polly broke her toast into pieces with her fingers.
    “What is modeling camp?”
    “It’s where you … you know, learn to be a model.”
    “Or just look like one,” Dia muttered.
    “What?” Polly asked.
    “Nothing. Where did you get this idea? Are your friends going to model camp?”
    “No.” Polly had told her mother several times what Jo and Ama were doing for the summer, but she must have forgotten. “I found it on the Internet.”
    “Why?”
    “Why did I find it?”
    “I mean, -why -were you looking? Do you seriously want to be a model?”
    Polly broke her toast into smaller pieces. Going into this conversation, Polly had had a feeling that her mother wasn’t going to be one hundred percent supportive. Dia was always saying how she was a feminist and how Polly was too. Dia didn’t like celebrity magazines or most TV shows because she said they were degrading to -women. Polly did like those things, and she was secretly worried she wasn’t a feminist.
    “Well, I think it could be interesting,” Polly said quietly.
    Dias face softened a little. She took a long sip of coffee. “Do you think you have the right look for it? Aren’t models supposed to be really tall?” she asked.
    “I’m still growing,” Polly said. “I could be tall.”
    “Polly, I’m five two. You’re taller than me, but you’ve never been tall.”
    Polly wanted to ask about her father, Was he tall? But she was afraid it would only hinder her chances.
    “Some models aren’t tall. Like … hand models.”
    “You want to be a hand model?”
    “No. Well, I don’t know.” Polly was an inveterate nail biter. She made her hands into fists.
    Dia sighed. She looked tired. “You don’t have enough to do this summer, do you?”
    “No, it’s not that. I just thought that this could be … interesting.”
    “Polly, modeling is not