Free Pop Princess by Rachel Cohn Page A

mind.”
    As I watched Henry slump off in the distance, I saw Jen Burke standing against the school’s brick wall, a cigarette in her hand. Doug was standing over her with his arms on either side of her, leaning against the wall and pinning her there. She was at some distance from me, but I was sure I saw her glance toward me and smirk.
    Screw school today. Screw Devonport High every day!
    I jogged all the way to the dance studio in the center of town. I had to jog half a mile out of the way so I wouldn’t pass by the grocery store where Mom worked during the day. When I got to the dance studio, I realized the difference in my body since the jog I had taken with Trina a few months earlier. Then, my muscles had ached and I had wheezed through most of the run. This time, I felt energized, ready for more, with no aching body parts and only a mild sweat on my brow.
    As I sprinted up the steps to the studio, I remembered: Oh yeah, demo tape. Three months had passed with no word from Tig. I could only assume record companies had found my singing as laughable as I had found the prospect that Tig would even consider me worthy. The math skills that had eluded me that morning suddenly came into play as I equated in my mind: no Doug, no band, no passing grades in school. With no word from Tig, that meant that the last best thing I could possibly have going was also gone. Shit.
    Jodie, my dance teacher, was practicing alone in her studio when I burst in. She stopped her moves and looked up at the clock.
    â€œAren’t you about four hours early?” she asked.
    I shrugged. “S’pose.”
    There was a pause like Jodie was considering whether to bust me or just deal. She let out a small sigh. “Well, if you’re going to cut school I guess I’d rather you be here where you’re safe than roaming the streets.” Yeah, like boring Devonport could even dream of being that scary. Jodie said, “Go get changed. You’ve gotten so far ahead of your regular class that we can use this time to go over some moves the rest of the class will just never be ready to do.”
    Jodie took the hardest steps from each class I had taken over the last few months and lumped them into one session. It felt great. I felt like friggin’ Janet Jackson and Madonna rolled into one superhuman dancing girl. The dancing freed my mind to think rationally. I realized: I had made a huge mistake with Doug. We could work this out. I couldn’t lose him. He and the band were my only hope to survive Devonport High. Of course I was ready to go all the way—what had I been thinking? Anyone who could dance with the kind of abandon I was experiencing that afternoon was surely ready.
    I watched the clock until I knew school had let out and Doug would be arriving home. I sprinted to his house, not caring that when I arrived he would see a sweaty girl with flushed cheeks and armpit stains from the day’s workout overload. The band wasn’t rehearsing that day, so I knew I would have Doug all to myself, to plead my case.
    I knocked on his front door, but there was no answer. I could hear the television blaring from the basement and assumed he couldn’t hear the doorbell buzzing. I entered the house through the open garage and crept downstairs, stopping to smooth my hair in a mirror lining the wall. When I heard squeaking noises as I walked down the steps, I figured they were coming from the TV.
    They weren’t. The sounds were coming from the couch, where Doug was naked on top of Jen Burke, going at it, all the way.

Sixteen
    I raced the few blocks to the ocean and threw my shoes off. I headed toward the water but stopped right in front of the surf. The day was gray and cold, blurry, and the roar of the ocean and its stormy motion made me dizzy as I stood before it. I vomited on the sand, a chunk-free liquid heave that burned my throat as it came up. Within seconds, breaking waves had washed the mess away.
    I