Free The Hard Kind of Promise by Gina Willner-Pardo Page A

who was pretty cute except for having huge teeth.
    "Hey," Dylan said. "I hate this. My mom is making me."
    "Mine, too," Sarah said, which wasn't true, but she felt she had to say it.
    Mrs. Gretch was explaining how they had to hold each other.
    "Sorry," Dylan said when he took Sarah's right hand with his left. "I'm not always this sweaty."
    "It's okay."
    "And I have canker sores. But they're not contagious."
    "Are you sure?" she asked. "I think they're from a virus."
    "Not these canker sores!" Dylan said proudly.
    "Well, okay," she said, even though the idea of touching anyone with canker sores made her want to scrub her hands with a Brillo pad.
    Everyone practiced one-two-three-ing while Mrs.
Gretch counted out the beats. The chaperones walked around making sure they were doing it right.
    "Very good!" Mrs. Gretch said. "Now with the music!"
    While they waited for the waltz to start, Dylan leaned forward.
    "What?" Sarah said, backing away, not wanting his canker sores too close.
    "What is wrong with your friend?" Dylan whispered.
    She glanced over at Marjorie, who was standing straight and tall while a boy Sarah didn't know argued with one of the chaperones. She could tell he was refusing to dance with Marjorie. Finally the chaperone grasped his arm and pulled him toward Marjorie. The boy held his arms the right way, but when Marjorie put her hand in his, he looked away, as if by not looking at her, he could make her disappear.
    "I don't know," Sarah said to Dylan as music flooded the room. "That's just how she is."

CHAPTER 8
    THE NEXT DAY AT LUNCH, Sarah waited for Marjorie outside her video production class, just as she always did. But when Marjorie came out, she didn't have her backpack.
    "I have to skip lunch," she said, leaning against the classroom door to hold it open. "Joey and I have to work on some stuff."
    "What stuff?"
    "How we want to shoot the movie. The lighting. Camera angles. That kind of thing."
    "Wow," Sarah said, impressed. "Will it take long? Because I can wait."
    "No, just go eat without me. I don't want to rush," Marjorie said. She seemed eager to go back in the classroom.
    "Well, okay," Sarah said. This would be the first time ever that she wasn't eating lunch with Marjorie, except for the few times when one of them had been sick. It seemed weird to eat without her.
    "Want me to get you anything?" Sarah asked.
    "No. I've got my lunch. I'm going to eat at the computer," Marjorie said. She turned and went back into the classroom. "Thanks, though!" she called out just before the door swung shut.
    As she made her way to Lizzie and Carly's spot, Sarah thought how horrible it would be if she didn't have them to eat with. Nothing was worse in middle school than not having someone to eat with. It was a good thing she had some extra friends, she thought, reminding herself of her mother.
    Lizzie and Carly couldn't stop talking about Cotillion.
    "Alison definitely had the best dress," Carly said. "I can't believe she's only going to wear it once. If I had that dress, I'd wear it every week and be happy."
    "It's so unfair. She's got a red iPod
and
a BlackBerry," Lizzie said. "Her parents buy her too much stuff." But she sounded jealous as she said it.
    "Didn't you think the boys looked hilarious?" Carly said. "Seeing them in suits just made me realize how gross they really are." She paused. "Except for Steve Birgantee. He looked pretty good."
    "They could have taken showers. They could have at least washed their hair." Lizzie shivered as she took a delicate bite of a Nutter Butter, which she was holding the way old ladies held teacups. "Some of them smelled."
    "I think it was on purpose," Carly said. "I think they didn't use deodorant so they'd smell and we'd be disgusted. They thought it would be funny."
    "Not all of them," Lizzie said. "Some of them are just pigs." She pulled her thick, frizzy hair up into a ponytail, as if she were giving the back of her neck some room to breathe. "The cutest boy I danced with