Flirting with Disaster - Softcover

Stapleton, Rhonda

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1416974652 ISBN 13: 9781416974659

Verlag: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

Felicity is a total romantic. That’s why she follows her heart—not the rules—in her job as a cupid. But when Felicity turns her matchmaking magic on her best friend, Andy, it’s Andy who breaks their golden rule: friends always come first. Andy is so wrapped up in her new guy that she’s ditching everyone else. How can Felicity stop her BFF from letting a BF come between them?

Meanwhile, Felicity decides to get over her crush on Derek by setting him up with someone else—but in her impulsive haste, she accidentally matches him with the whole school, and now everyone is in love with him. The entire student body is headed toward heartbreak, just weeks before prom. Does Felicity have what it takes to make everyone’s heart happy…including her own?

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rhonda Stapleton started writing a few years ago to appease the voices in her head. She lives in northeast Ohio with her two kids and their lazy dog. Visit her website at rhondastapleton.com.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

“There are lots of fun ways to have a good time at a party without drinking!” Mrs. Cahill, our health class teacher, hopped up on the end of her large desk. She crossed her legs beneath a flowing brown paisley skirt.

A few people chuckled at her words, and I bit back a laugh myself. At least she was enthusiastic about her topic. It was hard for me to scrape up enthusiasm for anything on a Monday, but Mrs. Cahill never lacked any.

“So, what did you guys list?” Mrs. Cahill asked. “Let’s share a few of our choices with the class. Now as I said before, I won’t be collecting them. This is for you to take home and hopefully implement in your life to encourage a lifestyle that avoids alcohol.”

Yeah, right. I was sure most of my classmates would instantly give up partying because of a list made in health class. That was totally plausible.

I glanced down at my paper. Our in-class assignment was to write ten “fun” things to do that didn’t involve alcohol. Out of my ten items, six of them involved staring longingly at Derek, the guy I’ve been madly in love with since freshman year. No way was I going to say that out loud, though.

James Powers thrust his hand into the air, a smarmy grin on his face.

“Go ahead, James,” Mrs. Cahill said. “What did you write?”

He made a big show of holding up his paper in front of his face. “Ahem. I put, ‘have sex.’”

His buddies around him guffawed, and several girls tittered behind their hands. I rolled my eyes. Mrs. Cahill should have known better than to call on James.

“Oh my God, James!” one girl whispered, giggling. “You’re so crazy.”

Mrs. Cahill blushed and pressed a hand to her beet-red cheeks. “Well, that’s … not quite what I meant.”

Mallory Robinson, my mortal enemy and the bane of my existence, turned and whispered something to her friends, Jordan and Carrie. Jordan nodded briefly in response, but Carrie barely looked at her. They both turned their attention back to James. Mallory’s face fell. She quickly recovered and started writing in her notebook.

I smirked. The dynamics between Mallory and her friends had changed ever since I’d set her up last month with Bobby Loward, a.k.a. Bobby Blowhard, the biggest weenie I’d ever known. It was still the most talked-about love match around school, even though the magic had worn off and Mallory and Bobby had split up a few weeks ago.

Of course, nobody else knew that there’d been magic involved in their hookup, let alone that I was the cupid responsible for the match. Total secrecy was the first rule of my job at Cupid’s Hollow. I wasn’t allowed to tell a soul that my hot-pink PDA was used to matchmake my classmates using the latest in handheld technology—love arrows shot through e-mail.

Not that anyone would believe me if I were allowed to spill the beans. Though maybe the ridiculous pairing of Mallory and Bobby Blowhard would be convincing proof.

Mallory’s friends hadn’t treated her the same since. It didn’t matter that they’d broken up the day the spell wore off. The damage was already done.

My only regret was that I couldn’t step forward and claim credit for what was surely an act of humanity: keeping Mallory’s stuck-up nose out of my best friend Maya Takahashi’s dating life by giving Mallory a relationship of her own to focus on. But the cupid contract I’d signed meant I couldn’t spill the beans—and frankly, I feared my boss Janet too much to screw around with that.

“What about spin the bottle, then?” Mitzi, one of the flaky chicks in our class, asked. “That’s just making out, not actually doing it.”

Andy Carsen, my other best friend, bit back a laugh. She leaned over and whispered to me, “I think the whole point of the exercise was to avoid bottles.”

“No kidding,” I said quietly, shaking my head.

Mrs. Cahill looked over at me. “Felicity, since you feel like talking, do you have anything to add to our conversation? What did you write down on your list?”

Whoops. I glanced at my paper, reading aloud an entry that wouldn’t totally humiliate me for life. “Um, play poker.”

Not that I knew how to play, but I don’t think that mattered to her. At least I didn’t say something that involved being naked.

“Good answer!” Mrs. Cahill beamed at me. “Card games are a fun and healthy alternative to drinking at a party.”

“What an ass kisser,” I heard Mallory whisper to her friends. They giggled.

Andy spun around in her seat and stared hard at Mallory until she looked away.

The bell rang, dismissing us from class.

“Make sure you hold on to those lists,” Mrs. Cahill said loudly over the bell as we all rushed to evacuate. “Especially since we’re nearing prom season.”

“Thank God that’s over,” I said to Andy as we walked down the hall. “I swear, that class gets weirder every day.”

“No kidding,” Andy said. “I don’t think Mrs. Cahill was expecting those responses. She should know James by now, though. He’s always going to give the most obnoxious answers he can think of.”

“You know, I’d feel bad for her if she hadn’t given us this dumb assignment in the first place.”

I hated health class with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns. It was possibly the most boring, ineffective course I’d taken to date. The only good thing about it was I didn’t have to take gym anymore, one of the other most terrible classes ever.

I was so not athletic, and it was highly unfair that I was forced to participate in events that made me look like a dumbass. Ever see me dribble a basketball? Once you did, you’d understand my plight.

But health class was not much better. For one period every day I was trapped in a room with both James and Bobby. And even worse, with Mallory, who took every opportunity to shoot me nasty glares across the room, or make snotty comments to her friends.

In between shooting me the evil eye, Mallory would sneak peeks at James, who was her boyfriend freshman year. She was probably wondering why they weren’t still together. Um, maybe because she was a total cow. Not that James even noticed her anymore. He was too busy trying to show the whole class how very funny he was.

Fortunately, Andy was in there with me. She helped make the time go faster with her dry humor.

“Hey, Felicity, that was a good answer,” Bobby Blowhard said, appearing out of nowhere and sliding in between me and Andy. “I didn’t know you played poker. What’s your favorite kind? I like Texas Hold’em.”

Fortunately for us, and all of mankind, Bobby wasn’t wearing his usual mesh workout shirt. Instead he had on a tight black spandex top. I suppose it was his way of enticing people to look at his muscles, but I can’t say it worked on me.

“Actually, I don’t really play,” I mumbled, trying not to be rude, but also not wanting to encourage him into further conversation.

Bobby was … overbearing, to say the least. I’d noticed that once the cupid spell wore off him, he lost his attraction toward Mallory and instantly regained it toward me.

Lucky, lucky me.

“Oh.” Bobby paused and flexed a little. “Well, maybe I could teach you sometime. I...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1416974652
• ISBN 13: 9781416974659
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar