Free 3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows by Ann Brashares Page A

interesting. You are interesting. You are too interesting for modeling, in my opinion. Do you really want to be judged just on how you look?”
    “I think there’s a lot more to it than that,” Polly said. “It’s like … acting, actually.” She went back to work on her toast. “And you learn about fashion. Which I’m pretty interested in. And it said on the Web site you can learn about photography and fitness.”
    “Polly, you are getting crumbs everywhere.”
    Polly abandoned her toast and tried to dust her hands off carefully over her plate. “Please, can I please go? I can take the Metro there and back on my own. You don’t need to do anything.”
    Dia sighed again, more loudly this time. “I don’t know,” she said, but she got the look of resignation Polly was aiming for. It used to take longer to get Dia to the resignation stage, but Polly had refined her technique.
    “I’ll think about it,” Dia said.
    “Okay,” Polly said. She was smart enough not to allow herself any expression of triumph. I’ll think about it meant yes. Maybe meant probably. No meant it would take some more work on Polly’s part to convince her.
    “Why aren’t you eating breakfast?”
    Polly stuck one of the mangled bits of toast into her mouth. “I am.”
    •••
    Jo woke up that morning -with a kissing hangover. Her lips felt swollen, her cheeks felt raw, and her conscience stung a little. She had heard about this kind of hangover before, but she had never had one.
    “Joseph, you’re on flatware this shift,” commanded Jordan, the pimply, solitaire-playing assistant manager who wouldn’t have hired her. He liked to send her into the kitchen to load and unload the silverware whenever one of the dish-washers failed to show up.
    Jo nodded distractedly at him and veered toward the kitchen, train of thought unbroken.
    “Hola, Hidalgo,” she said to the fry cook, -who was standing at his locker.
    It wasn’t like she had never kissed anyone before. She’d kissed Arlo Williams several times at parties. He had been more nervous than she was.
    Arlo s kissing -was different, though. It didn’t cause the swelling or the stinging. Kissing Arlo was maybe like drinking one beer, -whereas kissing …
    Wait a minute. Jo -winced. Kissing … -whom? What-was his name?
    Oh, my God, did she really not know his name? Had he told her and she’d forgotten? No, she -would have remembered it. Had she told him hers? Had she really landed a severe kissing hangover and never even bothered to introduce herself?
    Wow. She couldn’t help thinking of Ama. What would Ama say? She didn’t want to think about that. She pictured Bryn, whom she’d see later at the dinner shift. Bryn would understand. He was gorgeous, Jo would say, and that would be explanation enough. In fact, she was a little bit excited to tell Bryn about it, because Bryn -would be excited about it too. Maybe Jo wouldn’t mention the fact that she didn’t know his name. That was kind of a hoochie move, even for a person like Bryn.
    Jo began unloading the clean silverware from the night before. She mindlessly sorted the pieces in the cart, glad it was still early and no one else was in the kitchen. She was happy to have some time to herself. She was grateful that her mom had still been asleep this morning -when she’d left the house for a run on the beach and then a swim in the ocean. She’d snuck into the outdoor shower to clean up and dress for -work and left without being seen.
    “Did he tell you?” Those were the only-words her mother had said to her on the ride home from the bus the night before. Jo had nodded and that had been it. Jo had gone to bed not thinking about her mother or her father or -what he’d told her. She’d fallen asleep thinking of kissing on the bus.
    She shut the door to the giant commercial dishwasher -with a bang and a shudder.
    So she had kissed a stranger. So she didn’t know his name. Everybody-was allowed a random, possibly misguided