Free Teen Idol by Meg Cabot Page A

grande, in a tall paper cup. He looked a thousand times more awake than he had the day before.
    "Hey, Jen," he said, sliding into the seat behind me.
    I have to admit, I was shocked to see him. What was he
doing
here? I’d been sure that he wouldn’t be coming back. Sure of it.
    Only now he was back. He hadn’t disappeared after all.
    I turned around and whispered, glad the second bell hadn’t rung yet so there weren’t a lot of people in the room, "What are you
doing
here?"
    Luke blinked at me from behind the wire-rimmed glasses. "What do you mean? I’m staying for two weeks. Didn’t they tell you?"
    "Um, yeah," I whispered, "but I just . . . I just figured. . . ."
    "I was a quick study?" Luke smiled. It was the same smile that had melted hearts all over the world when he’d flashed it at Angelique Tremaine’s Guinevere. And, I’ll admit, it gave me a flutter.
    But not enough of one not to be all, "Luke—"
    "Lucas," he corrected me.
    "Lucas, then. You . . . I mean, you so obviously hated it here." And then, because I felt I had to, I added, "Hated me, too."
    The smile disappeared. "What are you talking about, Jen? I don’t hate you."
    "But the whole Cara thing—"
    "Well, yeah," he said with a grimace. "That wasn’t too pleasant. But after you yelled at me, I got . . . curious."
    "Curious? About what?" Then I added hastily, "And I never yelled at you. I was just—"
    "Letting off steam. I know. Still." He opened the latte and released its rich aroma into the air. "I want to see how it all turns out."
    I stared at him like he was nuts. "How
what
turns out?" I asked him. "What are you talking about?"
    But I never found out, because just then the bell rang.
    I wouldn’t say that, after that moment, Luke and I started getting along like—well, like Lancelot and Guinevere or anything. I mean, he still walked around with this little frown on his face a lot of the time . . . especially when there wasn’t anything worth frowning over going on at all. Like when Courtney Deckard and her friends walked by us in the hall, they’d all lower their gazes to Luke’s feet, then slowly lift them along the length of his body, until they met his eyes. Then they’d smile.
    Why should
this
make him frown? That’s how the popular crowd communicates. Everyone knows this. They are checking out his outfit to make sure it’s regulation trendy. This is status quo for the popular set.
    Other times, he seemed to find stuff that wasn’t funny at all totally hilarious. Like during show choir rehearsal. Luke seemed to find Mr. Hall’s constant nagging of me to "quit sloughing off" and get Trina her hat faster during "All That Jazz" absolutely thigh-slappingly funny.
    Although I honestly don’t know what cracked him up so much about that. It’s no joke, trying to get from the top of the riser down to the bottom in time for the sopranos cancan, or whatever it was. I finally figured out that if I threw Trina the hat from the top of the riser, she could get it in time to join the kick line with Karen Sue Walters and all those guys.
    I’m not the world’s best thrower, but Trina is an excellent catcher, so that seemed to work. At least, Mr. Hall quit yelling at me and moved on to yell at the baritones.
    I guess after his initial shock at the barbarism existing in a modern-day high school, Luke mellowed out a little. Even lunch seemed not to faze him. It helped that the second day, he brought his own. Of course, that nearly blew his cover—or at least I thought so—since the lunch he brought had so obviously been flown in from Indianapolis. I mean, there are no sushi places in Clayton. We don’t even have a limo company! How are we going to have sushi?
    But Luke—pretty smoothly, I thought—explained that he’d made the sushi himself, with tuna from the fish counter at Mr. D's. I have to admit, this almost made me choke on my Diet Coke. But Luke said it so matter-of-factly that even Scott believed him. In fact, the two of them got