Three

Sam woke to the sound of her mother screaming.

That was how it always happened. That was how her mom lived: screaming. Screaming into the phone, screaming at the dog, screaming at books. She didn't scream at her kids. She hadn't really screamed at Sam's dad, before the divorce. That was just how you knew she was mad--when she wasn't screaming at you. When she was talking in that quiet, low voice that made you strain forward to catch every word.

And Sam supposed she could have dealt with the screaming--she wouldn't have dealt with it well; Sam had far too much of her quiet, nervous father in her--if it hadn't started until after six-fifteen in the morning. But some stupid client or other always wound up calling at like six-twelve, robbing Sam of her last few minutes.



But sixteen years is enough to accustom anyone to anything, or so Sam supposed, so she just dragged her sorry, sleepy self out of bed and jumped into the shower and let the water pound over her head. Tuesday. At least it was Tuesday. Monday would have been significantly worse.

Monday had been bad, actually. Stupid Elena Harrison, who was the kind of girl you loved to hate--pretty, flirty, but good at math, so you couldn't even make fun of her for being a freaking bimbo--had been absent, so her (actually) stupid best friend, Chloe Hart, had had to ask Sam for help with her German homework. Chloe was a sweet kid but, to put it nicely, dumb as a brick.

And then she'd had to deal with Mike at lunch, because some days he was just like that; actually, she was beginning to detect a pattern: every three days, Mike would come and sit by her and Jess, and make some oh-so-casual comment about how simply intriguing AP Physics was. Because apparently every three days was Mike's calculated ratio for making Sam fall in love with him.

(It wasn't working.)

And then, of course, as she tried to evade Mike after school, she forgot to go to a German Honor Society meeting, which meant that Frau Diller was going to, quite possibly, hit her so hard upside the head that she'd fall down a full flight of stairs, even though the German room was a solid hundred feet from any sort of staircase.

There did, however, have to be benefits to being knocked down the stairs by your German teacher. After you got knocked down the stiars by your German teacher you couldn't possibly ever be expected to go back to German Honor Society, even though you were quite clearly being groomed to be president.

And everyone would have so much pity for you, Sam assumed, after you got knocked down the stiars. The boy she did like--not Mike--would finally have to notice her. And sure, maybe pity wasn't exactly the emotion you wanted to garner for adorable boys who may or may not have been the kind of boy who tended to fall for girls like Chole Hart. But after he noticed her with pity, Sam would have been able to win him over with her wit and smarts.

And, of course, Sam thought as she turned off the shower, and toweled her hair dry--as her brother Jeremy's bellowing, "Jesus Christ, Mom, some people are TRYING TO SLEEP. Would you please SHUT THE HELL UP?!"--she thought that the biggest perk to getting knocked down the stairs by a furious German teacher with an inexplicably Midwestern accent was that you might, just possibly, if you were lucky, go deaf.