He Loves Me Not Read Online Free Page B

is the party?” I said.
    “Saturday night,” Lucy repeated.
    I looked at my engagement calendar. I was playing the piano for a dinner party.
    “Anybody would think you were the presidential aide for foreign affairs,” said Lucy irritably. “Don’t you ever move without that fat, foolish book?”
    “I’m sorry,” I said desperately. “I would if I could.” She didn’t want me to explain anything to her. She didn’t care that I had made a commitment and had to stick to it. She just smiled at me tightly and moved on.
    I felt as isolated from high school life as if Lucy had shut a door and bolted it.
    How could I possibly go play some dumb piano pieces for some middle-aged clods when my best friend Kathleen’s good-bye party was that night? How could I not have known Kathleen had a boyfriend? Or that she was moving?
    I tried to picture Lucy’s party. All my old friends sitting around in pajamas, giggling, telling scary stories and…
    What is the matter with me? I thought. That’s what we did in the sixth grade. Nobody is having slumber parties any more. This party will be…
    …the kind of party where I usually sit on a piano bench. Where people drift up to the piano and ask for “our song.”
    Our song. I wondered if Kathleen and her Billy had an “our song.” If they danced closer and looked at each other more lovingly when somebody like me played it.
    One thing for sure. I didn’t have a song, unless it was “Work, Work, Work.”
    I had one more class. I didn’t spend it thinking about music but I didn’t pay any attention to the teacher either. I sat there looking at the backs of people’s heads. At boys’ shoulders and girls’ fluffy hair. At oxford collars and pullover sweaters. I settled on one particular back view: a senior boy who played football and whose shoulders consequently took up a lot more room than anybody else’s.
    Good grief, I thought. I’m behind in every class, I have a rough gig coming up, I’ve completely lost touch with every friend—and I’m sitting here rhapsodizing about shoulders.
    The shoulders were very restless. They kept twitching and shifting, and twice fingers crept around awkwardly to scratch between them. I thought, if I were just one seat closer, I could scratch his back for him.
    Just then he turned around. You know that awful moment when somebody you’ve been staring at catches you staring at him? You feel guilty, as if you’ve been cheating on a test or something, and you blush.
    I thought, You really know you’re at the bottom when you’ve been caught daydreaming about scratching somebody’s shoulder blades. I comforted myself that at least I couldn’t be any worse off. Things could only get better. I even toyed for a moment with the idea of skipping my gig to go to Lucy’s party…but no, then things would get worse. Ralph would probably knife me or something.
    Ralph. Now there was a male who spent plenty of time around me.
    I considered the possibility of having a crush on Ralph. There were several drawbacks. First crushes should just spring themselves on you, not be carefully planned during English Literature. Second, Ralph was old. Third, I had just established that I was overdosing on music. If I hung around Ralph any more than I already did, I would drown in it.
    So much for the only available man in my life.
    I went back to studying shoulders.

4
    T HE PROBLEM IN PLAYING for people your parents’ age is that you make them feel old, which depresses them. Then they wish you weren’t there playing the piano after all, which rather dampens your performance. So for that Saturday’s dinner party, without the combo there to look old for me, I had to look old on my own.
    I wore concert black: a shimmering, black knit shirt, a six-chain necklace of rhinestones, and long rhinestone earrings. A matching tight black skirt studded with sparkles and streaked with black satin ribbon. I braided my hair into a complex arrangement with several tiny black