Free Megan Meade's Guide to the McGowan Boys by Kate Brian Page B

and I aren’t going to enforce it. You think you’ve been grounded before, just test me. A new day has dawned, guys. Get used to it.”
    â€œDad!” Evan said, sitting forward.
    â€œTrust me, Ev, you’re the last one who should try to argue with me on this,” his father said firmly.
    â€œThanks a lot,” Doug said under his breath.
    Finn smacked him on the back of the head as Megan prayed for the sweet relief of death. If these guys hadn’t despised her before, they definitely did now.
    â€œAll right, everyone,” Regina said, clapping. “Let’s eat.”
    Â *  *  *
    That night Megan scrubbed her face vigorously with the exfoliating apricot face wash Regina had left for her in her bedroom. It seemed that Regina was going to continue to try to put Megan in touch with her girly side whether she wanted to be or not. But that was the least of Megan’s problems—Evan hadn’t even looked at her once during dinner and Doug had kept kicking her foot away under the table. And every time someone passed a dish to Megan, Ian had shouted, “Hands off!” and cracked up laughing. The whole experience had been completely humiliating.
    Everything’s going to be fine, she told herself, staring into her own eyes in the mirror. Unfortunately, she didn’t quite believe it. The McGowans had just put the nix on any possibility of Megan and Evan getting together, however remote it had been.Plus they had apparently made Doug hate her even more—something she hadn’t thought possible. At least John, at Regina’s urging, had put locks on her bedroom and the bathroom. Otherwise she might wake up one night to find Doug getting ready to smother her with a pillow.
    Megan splashed water on her face and turned off the faucet. Hmm. Okay, so this actually smells pretty good. As she pressed a towel to her skin, she heard voices on the other side of the wall and paused. They were coming from Evan’s room.
    â€œThis sucks,” someone whispered. “Since when are they so big on us following the rules?”
    â€œOne guess,” another voice replied.
    Megan shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. She tiptoed over to the toilet seat and sat down to listen.
    â€œLook, I’ve never seen Mom and Dad that serious,” someone else said. “You monkeys better get ready for a big-time crackdown.”
    â€œWe had this place wired tight, yo,” Doug said. “Now the girl has scorched that. I say we ice her until she cracks. We make it so bad she’ll be beggin’ to jet to Korea.”
    Megan swallowed hard. Wasn’t anyone going to defend her? Finn? Evan? Anyone?
    â€œDid you know that the Yankees have appeared in thirty-nine World Series and have won twenty-six of them?”
    Megan smiled sadly.
    â€œYeah, we know that, dill hole,” Doug snapped. “But who won in 2004?”
    â€œThe Red Sox. But—”
    â€œAnd who did they kick the big, fat butts of to get there?” Doug asked.
    â€œThe Yankees, but—”
    â€œThen why don’t you just shut up?”
    Megan took a deep breath. She slipped her towel over the towel bar and took a good, long look at herself in the mirror. If someone set a challenge like this in front of her on the soccer field, it would be rally time. But seven-to-one odds were not good. These guys not only had home field advantage, but they had their own language, their own history, their own secret playbook. Megan was going in blind.
    You should just walk in there. Shock the hell out of them. Tell them that you heard everything and that they’re not going to run you out of here without a fight, Megan told herself. But of course she would never do that.
    As the conversation next door degenerated into a sports debate, Megan turned away from her reflection. She was starting to wonder if coming to live with the McGowans was the worst mistake of her life.
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