Free Here's Lily by Nancy Rue Page B

skirt the next day at school, she grinned to herself over just how delicious it was going to be.
    Once Shad caught her smiling into space between words on the spelling test and whispered across the aisle, “What’s the matter, Snobbins? Bad gas?”
    She kept smiling and waited for the perfect moment.
    It came just before lunch. Everyone else was finishing up a math test, and Lily and Shad were the only ones done—Lily, because math was easy for her; Shad, because he didn’t know how to do half the problems and wasn’t interested in trying. Ms. Gooch tapped each of them on the shoulder and beckoned them to follow her.
    â€œI have a job for you two,” she whispered when they got to her little glass-walled office cubicle.
    â€œI don’t have to touch her to do it, do I?” Shad said. He writhed away from Lily as if she had leprosy.
    â€œNo, Shad,” Ms. Gooch answered patiently.
    Lily just patted the envelope in her pocket and tried to let her eyes sparkle the way Kathleen’s did.
    â€œYou’re too weird,” Shad whispered.
    â€œI need for you two to count how many books are in each of these stacks and record the number in this notebook.” Ms. Gooch pointed to six tottering stacks of beat-up textbooks.
    â€œWhere’d all these come from?” Shad asked. “We don’t gotta use all these, do we? Dude, they look old !”
    He has absolutely no poise , Lily thought smugly.
    â€œDon’t worry about it,” Ms. Gooch said. “I’m putting them all in storage because they’re cluttering up the classroom and I’m never going to use them.”
    â€œYeah, but how come—”
    â€œYou don’t need that much information,” Ms. Gooch said. “Just count them. Unless, of course, you want me to give you your next math assignment.”
    â€œOne, two, three—”
    â€œI thought so.” Ms. Gooch gave Lily a knowing smile. “Bring me the list when you’re finished, okay?”
    â€œOf course,” Lily said, and she kept eye contact with Ms. Gooch until she was all the way out of the room.
    â€œWhy do you act like the lady at the bank?” Shad asked Lily when Ms. Gooch was gone.
    â€œWhat?”
    Shad stiffened his neck and pursed his lips. “ ‘Of course, Ms. Gooch,’” he said in a high-pitched voice. “That’s the way the lady at the bank talks to my mother, like she’s all kissing up to her or somethin’.”
    Lily could barely keep from laughing out loud. This was too perfect.
    â€œIt’s called poise,” she said. “You should learn about it.”
    â€œIt’s sissy.”
    â€œNo, it isn’t.” Lily stifled a meet-in-the-back grin. “Boys can have poise.”
    â€œYeah, right.”
    â€œYou could see for yourself.”
    It was time. Lily slid her hand into her pocket and pulled out the envelope, still perfect and unwrinkled. She held it out to him.
    â€œRead this,” she said.
    Shad looked at it the way he looked at every paper Ms. Gooch had ever passed out and said, “What’s this ?”
    â€œOpen it and find out,” Lily told him. “It’s for you.”
    Shad gave it one more long, beady-eyed look before he snatched it out of her hand and tore into it. Lily tried not to cringe as the perfect white paper suffered a ruthless rip. She kept her eyes on him as he pulled out the printed card and read, his lips moving soundlessly. It took him so long to read the whole thing, Lily nearly yanked it out of his hand and read it out loud to him. But, no—she wanted to enjoy this.
    When Shad got to the bottom of the card, he turned it over and looked at the blank side. Then he curled his lip up at Lily. “So?”
    â€œSo, there will be boys in it, and you can come. That’s an invitation. I— they— are only giving out so many, and you can’t get in without an