"Supermodels 3 - Having It All - Calhoun, B.B." - читать интересную книгу автора (Calhoun B.B)

"Hi, Naira. Hi, Chris," she said. "Listen, I'm really glad I caught you guys. I wanted to tell you that I'm going to be a few minutes late for the meeting."
"Is everything okay?" I asked her.
"Yeah, it's just that I have to meet with my biology teacher." She wrinkled her nose unhappily. "We had a pop quiz today, and I did pretty badly. It's only the fourth day of schoolЧI can't believe we already had a pop quiz!"
Chris nodded sympathetically. "Mrs. Mc-Kinnon is famous for them."
"She hasn't given my class any pop quizzes yet" I said.
"Don't worry," said Chris. "She will."
"You know, I'd be happy to help you out with biology anytime, Paige," I volunteered.
Paige smiled. "Thanks a lot, Naira. That would be great. Well, I guess I'll catch you guys later at the meeting. Room 208, right?"
"That's it," said Chris. He looked at his watch. "Come on, Naira, we'd better get going."
But as we started down the hall, we were stopped by someone calling Chris's name. I turned and recognized the girl with the curly brown hair that he'd been sitting with at lunch yesterday.
She was wearing a red silk shirt tied at the waist and black short-shorts with a pair of black combat boots. They were exactly the kind of shoes that would make my feet look like something out of a Frankenstein movie, but on her tiny feet they looked incredibly cute.
"Hi," she said, looking right at Chris and ignoring me completely. She put her hand on his arm and pulled him a little away. I wasn't sure if I should leave or not, so I pretended to look through my notebook.
"Listen," I heard the girl say. "The gang's
all headed over to the Silver Spoon for ice cream. How about it?"
Chris shook his head. "You know I can't. There's a REACH meeting now."
The girl shrugged. "So? You can cut out, can't you? I mean, you're the founder, or the president or something, right?"
Chris sighed. "That's exactly why I have to be there."
The girl rolled her eyes.
"Okay, fine," she said, turning away with a little flounce. "Have it your way." She walked off, tossing her head.
"Yeah, if I did have it my way, it'd probably be the first time," Chris muttered under his breath as he turned back to me.
"Everything okay?" I asked.
"Yeah, I guess so," he said. "It's just that sometimes Sabrina is pretty selfish. And she's probably jealous that I'm talking to you."
"Sabrina," I said. "So, she's your girlfriend, huh?"
He shrugged. "Sort of. Hey, let's get going and you can tell me your ideas for the school food drive. Like do you think we should make it just cans, or should we let people bring boxed stuff, too?"
Chris and I walked down the hall, working out the details of the food drive. We decided that it would be best to make a list of exactly the items we could use, and then make up some posters asking people to bring in those things on the day of the food drive. We chose the following Friday as the day for the drive, the day before the dinner at the church. That way, we still had more than over a week to publicize the food drive.
When we got to Room 208, there were about ten other people there. I recognized two girls from my math class and a guy from advanced biology.
"Excellent," said Chris, surveying the room. "This is a really great turnout, guys. Thanks for coming."
I had to admit, I was kind of surprised. I would have thought that in a school the size of HSPS there'd be more people who wanted to join something like REACH. Even Dance Club had more members! But I guess that a lot of people try to avoid things that are depressing, such as homeless people or animal shelters. Maybe they don't realize that unless they try to make a difference, things are never going to change. I knew I didn't want to
spend my life avoiding things that made me uncomfortable.
"Okay, everyone, here's the scoop," said Chris. He hopped up on one of the desks. "As most of you know, the club's first project is to make and serve a dinner for the homeless in the basement of St. Anne's across the street."
"What's the dinner going to be?" asked one of the girls from my math class.
"Good question," said Chris. "Ideally, it should be something that we can make a lot of, and also that's nutritious and tastes good."
"Tall order," commented a guy with long hair and freckles.
"How about a pasta dish?" I suggested. "We could make a chunky tomato sauce with lots of healthy vegetables in it."
"Great," said Chris. "By the way, everybody, this is Naira. She came up with a great idea for holding a food drive here at school to get food donations for the dinner. So, I guess we should ask for boxes of pasta."
"I'm going to write this down," I said. I pulled my organizer date book out of my backpack and turned to the section with the pad of paper. FOOD DRIVE, I wrote. 1ЧPASTA.
"Okay, what else do we need?" said Chris.
"Spaghetti sauce, I guess."
"Actually, it's really easy to make your own sauce," I said. "And it tastes so much better. All we need is olive oil, tomato paste, canned tomatoes, and seasoning."
I saw Paige come in and take a seat in the back of the room.
"Sounds good," agreed Chris. "Now, I say we ask the students to bring only the non-perishablesЧyou know, the stuff in boxes and cans, like the pasta, tomato paste, oil."
"What about the vegetables?" asked a girl with short blond hair. "Where are we going to get those from?"
"From the stores and restaurants in the neighborhood," said Chris. "Between now and next Saturday, each of us should go around to as many places as we can to get pledges for vegetables. Then on Saturday morning I'll pick up the stuff with anyone else who wants to help."
"I'll come with you, Chris," I volunteered.
"Great," he said. "And can you be in charge of the food drive, too, Naira? Since it was your idea and everything?"
"No problem," I said.
Chris beamed. "You guys," he said, looking
happily around the room. "I can tell that this is going to be a great year for REACH. And this dinner is just going to be the beginning."
That night, I sat up at the dining room table, outlining my history paper that was due the following Thursday. The apartment was quiet because everyone else had gone to bedЧ which was where I wanted to be too.
It had been a long day. After the REACH meeting, Paige had gone with me to my favorite card store to look for a postcard that I could send to Kyra and the boys. But the store had just closed. I was lucky to find a souvenir stand nearby that sold postcards. There really weren't any interesting cards, though, so I had to settle for one with an aerial picture of Central Park.