Free Teen Idol by Meg Cabot Page B

into this whole conversation about sushi-grade tuna and flash freezing. I had no idea what they were talking about, but I was pleased that my friends were making an effort to make the new guy feel welcome. . . .
    Until I remembered Luke wasn’t actually "the new guy." He was the former star of
Heaven Help Us
, ex-boyfriend of Angelique Tremaine, a breathtaking Tarzan in his loincloth, and a heroic and tragic Lancelot. It was a testament to Luke’s acting skills, I suppose, that even
I
began to think of him as Lucas Smith, transfer student. He didn’t break out of the character of Lucas at all that next day—
    Except for once. And that was right after first period, when he learned of the kidnapping of Betty Ann Mulvaney.
    "Why are you taking Latin?" Luke asked me as we moved toward my locker after class. "I mean, isn’t it a dead language? Nobody even speaks it anymore."
    "It’s good to know," I said, using the standard response I give everyone. Because the truth is too weird to explain. "For the SATs."
    "You don’t need it," Luke said with kind of an alarming amount of confidence for someone who’d only met me twenty-four hours ago. "You work for the school paper. You know all about grammar and stuff. What are you
really
taking it for?"
    Maybe because he’s older—only nineteen, but much older than most nineteen-year-olds, considering he has his own house in the Hollywood Hills and that his paychecks are about ten million dollars more than what my dad makes every year, not to mention his commitment tattoo and all—I told him the truth.
    "I heard Mrs. Mulvaney was a really good teacher," I whispered in case Courtney Deckard or any of her friends might be around, listening. "So I signed up for her class."
    Luke understood even better than I thought he would.
    "Oh, yeah," he said. "That’s like in acting. If you want to work with a really good director, you take the part, no matter what it is or what the movie’s about. Only . . . well, no offense, but Mrs. M. doesn’t seem all that great. I mean, she just kind of seems to . . . be there."
    "Oh," I said. "Yeah. Well, right
now
. She’s a little off these days, on account of Betty Ann."
    Luke asked who Betty Ann was, and I told him. I guess I told him a little too much—like the rumor about how Mrs. Mulvaney hadn’t been able to have kids and that Betty Ann was her substitute baby, in a way. The truth was, I was still worried. About what Kurt and those guys were going to do to Betty Ann. Because I didn’t think any of them were smart enough to realize how important Betty Ann was to Mrs. Mulvaney. I mean, to Mrs. M., Betty Ann isn’t just a doll or the school mascot or anything. She’s kind of like . . . well, family.
    Telling Luke that was a mistake, though.
    "Kidnapped her?" he practically yelled, right there in the hallway. "What for?'
    "It’s a prank," I explained. "The senior prank."
    "Oh, yeah, very funny," he said. "When are they going to give her back?"
    "Well, after graduation, I guess," I said. I hoped.
    But that wasn’t a good enough answer.
    "
After
graduation?" Luke was appalled. "Do you know who did it? Who has her?"
    "Well," I said. "Yeah."
    "So make them give her back," Luke said. "Make them do some other prank. This one’s not funny."
    I agreed with him, of course, but what could I do? I was just a lowly junior. I had no control over Kurt and his friends.
    Only it turned out Luke didn’t quite see it that way.
    "That’s not true," Luke said to me. "And you know it, Jen."
    I told Luke what I’d said to Kurt that day—the day he’d first stuffed Betty Ann into his backpack. I told Luke how I’d asked Kurt what he was doing. And that Kurt had told me to relax.
    Luke, hearing this, just shook his head. He didn’t say anything more about it after that.
    But I noticed that he was especially nice to Mrs. Mulvaney. Luke was nice to everyone—which was why practically every girl in school, not just Trina, had fallen in love with him before the