Free Big Boned by Meg Cabot Page B

too.”
    We’re sitting there like that, holding hands across our three-bean salads, when Sarah strides up, a mulish expression on her face.
    “Hel lo ,” she says, but not in a salutary greeting sort of way. More in a where-have-you-been? sort of way. “There you are. Everyone is looking for you. There’s an emergency administrative housing staff meeting in the second floor library upstairs. Like, now . The only person who’s not there is you.”
    I jump up, sliding a napkin over my mouth. “Oh my God, really? I had no idea. Sorry, Tad, I better go—”
    Tad looks perturbed. “But you haven’t even finished your protein shake—”
    “I’ll be all right,” I assure him—no offense, but that protein shake had tasted like chemical waste. “I’ll call you later, okay?”
    I refrain from kissing him good-bye—it’s the cafeteria, crowded with residents on their lunch break, and our relationship is still supposed to be purely student/teacher, after all—and settle for giving his hand a quick squeeze before I follow a still scowling Sarah past Magda’s desk, out into the lobby, and up the stairs to the second floor library, which still contains the nineteenth-century mahogany bookcasesthat once held the Fischer family’s extensive leather-bound collection of classic literature, and where we’ve attempted, numerous times, to keep books, only to have every single one of them stolen, no matter how battered or cheesy-looking the cover, and then sold on St. Mark’s Place.
    The room is still amazingly popular, however, with residents who have a test to study for and who need to get away from their partying roommates. I’m the one who made up and posted the Shhhh! Quiet Study Only Please! and Group Study Down the Hall in Rm 211 signs and posted them under the plaster cherub moldings that a hundred years earlier had looked down on sherry parties, not kids pounding on Mac-Books. But whatever.
    “What’s going on?” I ask Sarah, as we trot up the stairs. “What’s the meeting for?”
    “I wouldn’t know,” Sarah says with a sniff. “Student staff is not invited. Our meeting is tonight at nine. Once again, we apparently aren’t considered good enough to mingle with the exalted professional staff.”
    “I’m sure it’s just because they figured the majority of you would be in class right now,” I say, taken aback—mainly at the bitterness in her tone. Sarah hates not being involved in anything that the professional staff is doing…for which I don’t blame her, exactly. She certainly works as hard (if not harder) as any of us, and for room and board only, on top of which, she goes to class full-time. It really does suck that now the college is planning on yanking her insurance and everything else. She has every right to complain—even to strike.
    I just wish there were some other way the GSC couldhave gotten the president’s office to listen to them than to resort to such an extreme. Couldn’t they all just sit down and talk ?
    Then again, I guess they’d tried that. Hadn’t that been what Owen’s job was?
    Look how well that had turned out.
    “How’s it going?” I ask her, as we reach the second floor—quiet at this time of day, since most of the residents are either in class or downstairs, eating. “I mean, with the GSC stuff, now that Dr. Veatch is…you know. Out of the picture? I know it’s only been a few hours, but has there been any…progress?”
    “How do you think it’s going?” Sarah demands hotly.
    “Oh, Sarah,” I say. “I’m sorry—”
    “Whatever,” Sarah says, with uncharacteristic—even for her—venom. “I bet I can tell you exactly what’s going to happen at this meeting you’re about to step into. President Allington is going to appoint someone—Dr. Jessup, probably—as interim ombudsman—until a replacement for Dr. Veatch can be found. Which is ironic, because Dr. Veatch was a replacement until a replacement for Tom could be found. Sebastian insisted it