Ready or Not by Meg Cabot Page A

two.”
    I was at the cash register watching for stupid neighborhood kids when the overhead bell on the front door to the store tinkled. But instead of Mr. Wade or one of the other regulars coming in to complain about our lack of selection, my sister Lucy walked in.
    This was a huge surprise, because so far as I knew, Lucy hadn’t set foot inside Potomac Video for years. Popular people like Lucy don’t have time to watch DVDs, as they are much too busy going to parties and making out with their boyfriends. True, Lucy did spend the occasional Friday night at home, but she always let the video-choosing be done by someone else. Potomac Video, with its life-size cardboard cutouts of Boba Fett and Han Solo, open duct work in the ceiling, and hand-printed signs ( RESTROOM FOR EMPLOYEES ONLY . EVERYONE ELSE JUST HAS TO HOLD IT ), was hardly Lucy’s kind of place.
    You could totally see that she was thinking as much herself as she made her way past the New Releases shelf—attracting the admiration of just about everyone in the place, most of whom were college-age guys in Kiss the Geek T-shirts, arguing over which Star Trek movie to rent. When she finally saw me at the register, her face crumpled in relief, and she came hurrying up to the counter—oblivious of the jaws she caused to slacken along her way—and went, “Hey, Sam.”
    â€œUm,” I said. “Hey. What are you doing here?” Because I would have thought she’d have been out with Jack, or some of her girlfriends, at the very least.
    Then I remembered.
    â€œGod,” I said, horrified on her behalf. “Did they ground you, too?”
    Lucy looked confused. “Who?”
    â€œMom and Dad,” I said. “You know. For the SAT thing.”
    She went, with a laugh, “No, they didn’t ground me.”
    I stared down at her. On the TVs all around us, Matt Damon’s image flickered as he said, “They killed the woman that I love!” The geeks over in Sci-Fi, I noticed, were staring at Lucy with the exact same look of intense longing that Matt wore.
    â€œWell, then,” I said, a little confused myself, “what are you doing here ?”
    â€œOh.” Lucy shifted her tiny little Louis Vuitton bag (a gift for her birthday from Grandma) from one shoulder to the other. “I thought I might rent a DVD. You might have heard of it. Something called Hellboy ?”
    I stared at her. “ Hellboy ,” I said.
    â€œYeah.” Lucy looked around the store. As soon as her head moved in the direction of the geeks over in Sci-Fi, they ducked, and pretended to be engrossed in the cover of the new Alien movie. “Do you guys have it?”
    â€œ Hellboy ,” I repeated. “With Ron Perlman and Selma Blair. Made in 2004. Based on the Dark Horse comic of the same name. THAT Hellboy ?”
    â€œI guess so,” Lucy said, looking blank. “I don’t know. Harold recommended it.”
    I stared at her even harder. “Harold MINSKY?”
    â€œYes,” she said. “He said it’s one of his favorite movies of all time. I thought I heard you talking about it, too. Didn’t you like it? I thought so.” She’d reached out to touch one of the Nightmare Before Christmas action figures Dauntra had wrapped around the Need a Penny? Take a Penny. Have a Penny? Give a Penny tray. “So. Do you have it?”
    Without taking my eyes off my sister, I said, to the geeks in Sci-Fi, “Hey. One of you grab Hellboy and throw it over here.”
    A second later, a copy of Hellboy landed in my hands.
    Lucy glanced over at the geeks and smiled. “Oh, thank you,” she said.
    The geeks, mortified, scattered for the safety of Documentaries.
    â€œHere you go,” I said, and handed Lucy the DVD.
    She looked at the cover and said, “Oh. My. So that’s Hellboy , there, with the bumpy things on his head?”
    â€œThey’re horns,” I said.