Romance Is My Day Job Read Online Free Page A

I won’t let it get me down. Maybe I could just blend in and pretend everything is okay. No one will see my disappointment. What’s so special about this dance anyway?
    It’s like any other, with four different years of classes mingling and moving on the dance floor. As I scan the room, I see Nici is happily losing her sanity—and her heart—dancing with Prescott, a tall new sophomore boy with a drawl. A skilled seducer with a fleet of adoring girls, Prescott easily indulges Nici—another female—on most levels, laps up the attention, and pays her those crucial compliments (you look pretty; aw, you’re so nice; wow, you’re intense; I’m sure he likes you, he’d be stupid not to; screw him, you deserve better). Judging from her glow, he might become a serious addition to her stable of crushes—which means hours of deliberation and romantic scene planning in the butt room for us.
    Along with the movement of colors and shimmering fabric, I watch how some couples hold each other in public, while others dance in large unisex groups. Real romances start on this very dance floor. Then the couples move out to the patio off the cafeteria. They sit out on the stone wall and talk and kiss until curfew. Or they go out to the cemetery next door. . . .
    With every dance, there’s a new expectation that this one will change my life—someone will appear and declare himself, will want me, that little red-haired girl who sits in the bleachers. But not this dance. Certainly not with Kent.
    I do my best to dance in heels and appear sinewy in my tight blue dress, but I wind up on the sidelines, nursing that too-sweet punch. Maybe in an hour, I can make a quiet escape, count this night as a total failure. But at least I tried. I always try.
    Tears threaten, but I force them back.
    It’s almost a losing battle when, suddenly, the unthinkable happens.
    â€œYou wanna dance?”
    I turn around and see Sam, the popular senior with a reputation for funny and crazy behavior. Dumbfounded, I stare up into his animated face, his big green eyes full of mischief. He once threw a boy’s whole bed out the window. He often pulls crazy stunts like running full speed at the wall to test the strength of a helmet. Without hesitation, Sam damages school property, lovingly torments his teachers, and sets up residence in the infirmary with his many injuries. Maybe he should have gotten kicked out, but he always just teeters on the edge. He is untouchable, and no one hates him—except maybe his football coach, but only when Sam turned warm-up exercises into a Chippendales show.
    To me, Sam is that boy who basically runs the school. And now he’s looking at me with this smile on his face.
    I nod automatically. Who wouldn’t dance with him?
    His hand grabs mine and whisks me onto the floor, guiding us to some pop song, possibly “In a Big Country,” but the song doesn’t register in my head. I’m too stunned. How does Sam even know to pick me? He has no clue I exist and now here he is, grinning down at me, his hand on my waist. He doesn’t sense what I’m going through, does he? We’re just having fun, and my mood changes in an instant.
    Sam is one of those experimental dancers, as in he jumps high in the air like David Lee Roth, then comes down in a split. I laugh, just marveling at how insane he must be. He laughs with me. There’s warmth behind his eyes, and I wonder what he’s like when he’s serious. I feel as if he can see through me, but I go with it, taking in the fact that this is the boy who launched wet balls of toilet paper out the window at visitors. The scary imp you don’t want to double-cross because he will come back at you ten times harder.
    One wouldn’t call him a ladies’ man, though he is fiendishly cute. The class clown doesn’t usually attract a flock of females, not until later. At the same time,