3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows Read Online Free PDF

day-trippers alike. Most of the -walls -were sliding glass, so you could open them up to the ocean breeze. Tables -were picnic style, -with metal boxes of Old Bay seasoning and rolls of paper towels every few feet.
    She had loved this place -when she -was younger. She remembered the sting of the seasoning on her fingers and the texture of the powdery pastel mints -with the gumdrop center kept in a bowl by the door. She -would often grab the outlaw second handful of mints on the -way out. The first handful tasted good and the second tasted like guilt. She had once confessed it to Father Stickel first thing after her Act of Contrition. He was so good at taking her junior crimes seriously.
    As a family, they never really -went to the Surfside anymore. “Too touristy,” her mom said. Jo didn’t understand the big problem -with tourists. Jo liked them. She often felt like one of them, even at home.
    The dinner hour had not yet begun, so she walked straight to the back office. The door -was open and the assistant manager -was playing solitaire on the computer.
    “I came to check on my application,” she said.
    He had longish hair and a lot of pimples, and though she could tell he was tall even sitting down, she could also tell he weighed about as much as she did, -which -was not all that much.
    “I’m Jo Napoli. I’m a friend of Bryn’s. She’s starting this week.”
    “How old are you?” he asked. He tried to sound suspicious and authoritative, but his voice cracked in the middle of it.
    How old are you? she felt like asking him back, but she stifled it. “Fourteen.” She cleared her throat in a mature fashion. “And a half,” she added, and then cursed herself for it. What a terrible touch. Who over the age of six ever added the half?
    It gave him the upper hand. His pimples seemed to recede. He clicked off his solitaire game. “I’ll check your Social Security number,” he said, hands poised over keyboard.
    “It’s on my application,” she said, trying to look large. She ran her fingers through her hair, -which seemed to make him nervous again.
    “Jo, you said?” He riffled through a stack of papers. “Your name is Jo? As in Joseph?”
    “As in Jo.”
    “Are you a female?”
    She rolled her eyes.
    He tried another stack of papers.
    “Okay, here you go,” he said, pulling one out. He studied it for a moment. “It looks like you’re hired.”
    “I am?”
    “I wouldn’t have hired you, but I guess somebody did.”
    “Gee. Thanks.”
    “You’re supposed to start tomorrow. You’re a busboy.”
    “Bus girl.”
    He brought his solitaire game back to life. “Whatever.”
    Polly had heated up the leftover spaghetti and meatballs from -when she and Dia had gone out to dinner on Sunday night. Polly sat at the little kitchen table, staring at her full plate and trying not to eat it. Her mother’s share was still in the pot because she was staying late at her studio again.
    Polly wound up a forkful of noodles and considered them. Models didn’t eat spaghetti and meatballs, did they? They mostly ate salads, she suspected. Maybe she could start making salads for her and Dia. If they didn’t involve blue cheese dressing or olives of any kind, then maybe Polly could get herself to like them.
    Later that night, lying in her bed, Polly couldn’t enjoy Little Women because her stomach -was grumbling and her brain kept abandoning the March girls and jumping instead to thoughts of the Girl Scout cookies in the pantry. She’d bought them from Sasha Thomas, one of the girls she regularly babysat. In fact, Polly had ended up spending all the money she got from babysitting Sasha on Sasha’s cookies, because Sasha was hoping to win an award from her troop for most cookie sales.
    Polly finally padded down to the kitchen in her nightgown and ate four Samoas, seven Thin Mints, three Do-si-dos, and one Tagalong, and then she felt like she was going to barf. That was not model behavior, -was it? Well, not unless she