Free The Secret Identity of Devon Delaney by Lauren Barnholdt

be, since I’ve already said yes, and everyone knows it’s quite rude to cancel plans.
    “Who’s that?” Katie asks. She starts pulling on my shirt. “Who’s that on the phone?”
    I ignore her and move to the other side of the refrigerator, out of her sight. I consider switching to the cordless phone but realize that to do so, I will have to leave this phone while I go get the cordless phone, and whoever hangs it up for me (i.e., Katie or one of my parents) might realize I’m on the phone with a boy and/or say something potentially embarrassing.
    “Great,” Luke says. “So we should probably get together at some point before that, to go over the script and figure out who’s going to play what parts. I’m pretty sure everyone wants to do it—Jared, Kim, Lexi, Matt O’Connor …”
    “Good idea,” I say.
    “Mo-oomm,” Katie says. “Devon’s being mean to me.”
    “Devon, I’d like you to get off the phone now,” mymom says. “We were in the middle of a discussion.” I ignore them both.
    “Do you have to go?” Luke asks. He sounds concerned.
    “Oh,” I say. “No, why?” The last thing I want is Luke thinking I’m not allowed to use the phone like a normal person. Not to mention the way I answered it.
    “I thought I heard your mom say you had to get off the phone.”
    “Oh, no,” I say, “She was talking to my sister.” I cover the mouthpiece with my hand. “Mom,” I whisper. “I’ll be off in a second, I’m talking about schoolwork.” Why is it when I’m lying, people believe me, and when I’m telling the truth, they don’t? Is it possible I’ve wrecked my karma so badly that now no one will believe me when I tell the truth? Am I The Girl Who Cried Boyfriend?
    “So when do you want to do it?” Luke asks. “It’s probably better to do it outside of school.”
    “Do you want to come over here?” I ask. “Maybe tomorrow afternoon or something? That way, we could write the script, and we could kind of go over it with everybody on Thursday and Friday at lunch.” I say the last part nonchalantly, like it’s a given that I’ll be sitting at the A-list lunch table.

    “Cool,” he says. “So we’ll talk more about this tomorrow?” His voice sounds deeper on the phone than it does in person. I wonder if it’s like that with all boys. I’ve never really talked to a boy on the phone before. Well, except my dad when he calls from work. But I’ve never really noticed a difference in his voice. Oh, and one time Mel and I called Brent Madison’s house last year to see if he would maybe go to the sixth-grade dance with Mel. But we chickened out and hung up on him pretty much as soon as he answered, so I never really got a chance to see if his voice sounded different or not.
    “Yeah,” I say. “See ya tomorrow, Luke.” I turn around to hang up the phone and almost slam into my mother, who is standing right behind me. “Whoa,” I say. Her shoulder is pressed up against my nose. I take a step back.
    “Was that a boy?” she asks. She takes the phone out of my hand and crosses the kitchen to set it back on the receiver. Her ponytail swings back and forth as she walks.
    “Yes,” I say. No sense in lying to her since I’m going to have to ask permission to have him over. “That was Luke Nichols. We’re working together on a social studies project.”

    “Is that your boyfriend?” my mom asks. Katie’s still sitting at the table, working on her picture, but my dad is nowhere to be found. This makes me instantly nervous, since this probably means my mom told him to go upstairs while she talks to me about this whole boyfriend thing. I can tell she’s trying to play it casual, get me to admit something by luring me into a false sense of security.
    “No, Mom,” I say. “Luke’s not my boyfriend.”
    “He’s not,” Katie agrees. She reaches into an open box of macaroni that’s sitting on the table and takes out a piece of ziti. “Her boyfriend’s name is Jared, and