He Loves Me Not Read Online Free Page A

top-drawer.
    I thought of the girl being kissed in front of her classroom and told myself that before long I’d have boys arguing over who got the thrill of kissing me in front of—
    “Alison!”
    Fantasies down the tube. It was a girl calling me.
    “Alison!”
    I turned to see who it was. Lucy, who moved to town about a week before I began playing for Ralph. Needless to say, I don’t know her very well. We sit next to each other in Chem, though, and once in a while we meet in the cafeteria. She’s one of these people you know you’d like tremendously if there were just time to be around her…but there’s never time. Whenever Lucy talks to me or waves at me I feel a twinge. I want to ask her to spend the night or come over after school or something, but I never do because I never can. “Hi, Lucy,” I said, beaming at her.
    “Listen, I know how busy you are, and I’m almost afraid to ask, but I’m having a party for Kathleen Devaney Saturday night and I’d love to have you come.”
    “Oh, I’d love to.” I said. It was my refrain. I knew perfectly well I couldn’t come Saturday night. Ralph had booked me to play for a dinner party. People who were paying a lot of money, made arrangements weeks, if not months, in advance. And although I might quit playing for Ralph, I certainly couldn’t quit when he had no replacement for me, not with three nights’ notice.
    Lucy had a calendar out—the tiny, pretty kind that Hallmark gives out free, where you have a quarter-inch of space per day to write in appointments. Fine, if you have to go to the dentist once and a party once. I felt pushy and ridiculous getting out my fat leather book and turning to Saturday to prove to Lucy I was really busy. Very busy.
    “I’m really going to miss Kathleen, aren’t you?” said Lucy mournfully. “When I moved here, Kathleen was all that stood between me and total loneliness. I want to give her a really special going-away party.”
    “Kathleen?” I said, stunned. “Kathleen’s moving?” In first, second, and third grades Kathleen Devaney had been my very best friend. We used to alternate meals at each other’s houses, and I couldn’t begin to guess how many times she spent the night. The Devaneys moved across town in our fourth-grade year, so we’d been in different elementary and junior high schools, but we’d kept our friendship up. In senior high we were so glad to be together again that we used to hug each other in the halls.
    Lucy burst out laughing. “Alison, you’re so out of touch,” she said. “Kathleen announced at least three months ago they were moving.”
    “Three months?” I said. And she hadn’t called me. Hadn’t said a word to me.
    But then, when was the last time I’d called Kathleen? My heart began hurting.
    “Billy is really cut up about it,” Lucy told me, shaking her head.
    “Billy?”
    “Billy Schuyler,” said Lucy, laughing at me, but getting irritated. I knew the symptoms well by now. “Kathleen’s only been dating Billy for a year, Alison, seven nights a week. You can’t pretend you haven’t noticed that, Alison.”
    I could only stand there and gape at Lucy. My best friend from childhood had a boyfriend as steady as that, and I didn’t even know who he was.
    Lucy shrugged her eyebrows at me and kept smiling, the way you would at a spoiled brat you like in spite of his rotten behavior. “I…I’m busy,” I said defensively. “My music is practically a full-time job, Lucy, what with having to memorize all those pieces and do all that practice. You just don’t understand how much work is involved. I’ll bet I’ve had to learn six or seven hundred pieces in the last year—and that’s not exaggerating. Everything from Diana Ross and Eddie Rabbit and Bette Midler back to the Beatles back to the Kingston Trio back to West Side Story back to—”
    “I get the point,” said Lucy. “You don’t have to brag all the time, Alison.”
    I choked back another defense. “When