Read an Excerpt

The Black Book [Diary of a Teenage Stud], Vol. IV

Chapter One

Jan. 11, 9 A.M.

I looked over at Molly, and she stuck her tongue out at me. I was glad we were next to each other. Her hair was hanging loose, and she kept pushing it back behind her ears and licking her lips. I wanted to lean over to her and say, "Don't be nervous. It's going to be okay," but they yell at you if you talk during the SATs. I was supposed to be concentrating on my own test, not on Molly.

I looked down at my left arm. Doing the SAT while wearing a cast was a pain in the ass. It's so big and clunky, I kept almost knocking my test booklet off the desk, and it was hard to hold onto the answer sheet while I filled in the bubbles with my right hand. It still says: Marry Me, Jonah in big letters on the side of my cast. I wish Molly had written it. That would have made my life much less confusing. But I know it wasn't her. It was Northgirl999 from the Internet. And I still don't know who she is.

The proctor was Miss von Esse, my German and homeroom teacher. She cleared her throat and said, "Please write your names on the answer sheet. After you write your names, enter in all the other information. When you are finished, look up at me so I'll know you're ready to move on."

I wrote my name in the space. Jonah Black. I wrote down my address and my hometown, Pompano Beach, Florida. Then I wrote down the code for Don Shula High School. I guess one of the few good things about getting kicked out of boarding school, and being sent home to Florida, and having to repeat the eleventh grade, is getting another chance at the SAT. I need all the help I can get.

When I finishedfilling out the information on the answer sheet, I looked up at Miss von Esse, but she wasn't looking at me. I looked over at Molly. She crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out again. I guess she thought she was being funny, but it was kind of distracting. All of the junior and senior girls from St. Winnifred's were taking their SATs at Don Shula High, along with the girls from the other Catholic girls' school, Sacred Heart. Because of that there were about three times more girls in the Don Shula auditorium than guys. Which was fine with me, although it definitely made it hard to concentrate on antonyms. I saw where Molly colored in the little circle on the Address section of her answer sheet marked F. I looked down at mine, where I'd colored in the circle marked M, and then back over at the Molly's answer sheet again. Her eraser was moist.

Molly winked at me and stuck her eraser in her mouth again, rolling it around on her tongue. Then she takes it out and traces a heart on my cheek. She kisses me where she's drawn the heart. Sophie's wrists are so delicate, and her hands flutter like little bird wings around my face. "I love you, Jonah Black," says Sophie, before she flies away.

"This first section of the test will take twenty-five minutes," Miss von Esse said. "When you finish this first section, you may go back and review your work. Do not go on to other sections. Are you ready?"

Molly ran her tongue around the edges of her lips.

"All right. Begin!" Miss von Esse said.

We opened up the seals on our test booklets and began the SAT. My first test was in math, which was good. I like math.

Two trains are headed toward Kennebunkport, Maine, at different speeds. Train A starts 660 miles away and is traveling at 45 miles per hour. Train B is 450 miles away and is . . . etc. For a few minutes I got all Zen with the math problems, filling in the bubbles like clockwork. I was feeling good.

Then I glanced over at the girl on my left. She was very tall and thin with stringy brown hair and a big purple bruise on her knee, as if she'd taken a bad fall. Fell off her bike, maybe. It looked like it hurt. I looked back at her face, but now Sophie O'Brien is sitting in her seat instead. She doesn't have a test booklet. She is just sitting there, chewing on a strand of her golden blond hair.

Sophie looks over at me with sad, sad eyes, and whispers, "Help me, Jonah." The diamond studs in her ears glitter in the fluorescent lights of the auditorium.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and turned back to my test. A team hasn't won 80% of the 35 games it has played against State. The team has lost 25% of the nine games it has played against City University. If the team plays four more games against State and five more games against City University and continues its percentage of wins and losses against each, how many games will the team have won for the season?

I read this a couple of times, but I couldn't get it to gel. I felt my heart beating quickly. Focus, Jonah, I told myself. Focus. On my left, I heard someone whimper softly. I looked over and there's Sophie again, crying. "Jonah, please. Save me."

I forced myself to go back to my test. In the next question they gave us a drawing of a rectangular solid and the length of three of the sides. We were supposed to find out the volume of the solid. I know I knew how to do that, but I started to panic.

I was like, I can't do it, I'm going to freak out. So I went on to the next question...

The Black Book [Diary of a Teenage Stud], Vol. IV. Copyright © by Jonah Black. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.