Free The Boy Project by Kami Kinard Page A

suddenly discovered that worry is good for the body.
    Life is really not fair. I mean it
finally
looks like karma has caught up with Maybellinefor being such a rotten person, and then I have to go and wave a big red cape in its direction. I may as well have yelled, “Hey, Karma! Lower your head and charge this way!”
    Why
couldn’t I have just quietly enjoyed the experience of Maybelline getting dumped from the safety of my desk? Oh. That’s right. Because it wasn’t very quiet at my desk because of all of that SNIFFING! The sniffing drove me to it. I swear.
    But did I have to turn around and say, “What’s wrong, Colleen? All that makeup not helping you get a boyfriend?”
    Every now and then, my dad will say something about “jealousy rearing its ugly head.” I wonder if Dad knows that revenge has an ugly head, too. I saw revenge rear its ugly head when Maybelline jerked her head from her desk after I stupidly opened my mouth about her boyfriend status.
    Did you know revenge has cold, evil-looking eyes under green eye shadow? It also has a perfectly formed mouth with beautiful teeth. And it can make the most innocent-sounding sentences make your blood run cold when it says, “Oh, I’ll get another boyfriend, Kara. Don’t you worry.”
    Know what? I’m worried.

Wednesday, January 24
Before breakfast
    Complained of hurt knee and begged out of running but promised to go tomorrow. Didn’t sleep well last night.
Sixth period
    Today Tabbi met Evan in front of school and wrote
Property of Tabbi Reddy
on his hand, like she’s done every day since they started going out. She added a big heart with a red Sharpie in honor of their two-week anniversary. That’s supposedly some kind of milestone. As she gushed about how it has been the best two weeks of her life, it made me a little sick. Just like it does every time she gushes about Evan. So, you see, today started out like a very normal day.
    Surprisingly, even Maybelline was acting fairly normal. Sure she glared at me when I got out of Dad’s Honda, but she pretty much does that every day. And she “accidentally” kicked my desk a few times when she got up to sashay to the pencil sharpener, but she does that about every day, too. And at least she’d stopped that annoying sniffing! I wondered if things between Maybelline
and me weren’t going to be
too
too much worse than they already were. I even thought maybe my confronting her yesterday was a
good
thing. Hey — I’d rather have my desk kicked a few dozen times than listen to sniffing all day long.
    But that was before lunch.
    At lunch I sat with Anna Johnstone and Dianna Leroy, just like old times. I
really
did not want to sit with Tabs and Evan on their highly publicized “two-week anniversary.” I noticed Anna was reading a book called
The Mediator
, which is about a girl who has a crush on a handsome ghost who is, like, two hundred years old. I loved that book! So we got into this great (but weird) conversation about the top ten ghosts you would consider going out with, and lunch flew by without my taking notes on any more subjects. So it wasn’t until fourth period that I got clued in that something was very wrong with my world. Here were my clues:
Tabbi did not come to class.
Evan did. But when he raised his hand to answer a question, it did not have writing on it. All that was left of his temporary tattoo was a pale pink blob where the heart used to be.
After class, Evan started walking toward my desk. “Where’s Tabs?” I asked. He shrugged! Then he passed my desk and stopped at Maybelline’s.
Next, Evan picked up Maybelline’s books and walked toward the door!!!
And Maybelline hooked her hand in the crook of Evan’s arm and walked with him!!!!
    Maybelline looked over her shoulder and gave me a big, exaggerated wink. “Told you I’d get a boyfriend,” she said.
    I couldn’t