Acting Friends Read Online Free PDF Page A

thinking of not letting me go to the party. Frankie Clarke’s going to be there , for goodness sake.’
    ‘I don’t care who’s going to be there.’ Mum’s lips tightened. ‘We still need to make arrangements.’
    I turned away with a groan.
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    said, her eyes sparkling. ‘I’ll get my dad to pick us up from the party.’
    ‘A sleepover!’ Grace clasped her hands together.
    The whole plan was just getting better and better.
    ‘Please. Mum?’ I said.
    She and Dad looked at each other. Dad nodded.
    Mum smiled. And I knew they were going to let me go.
    Yes.
    The week passed unbearably slowly. My main concern was how I looked: What was I going to wear to the launch party? How I was going to sort my hair out by the weekend? Would Frankie Clarke even notice me?
    At school, the second week was much like the first. The weather was hot for September and the days were exhausting, though I had, finally, learned my way about the building. It still seemed noisy and chaotic but I was getting used to the older girls now, and my heart had stopped pounding every time I walked between lessons, unsure exactly of where I was going. I knew my teachers’ names and, so far, had done okay in all my lessons. Since almost falling off my chair on the first day, I hadn’t even made an idiot of myself in front of anyone – at least I didn’t think so.

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    And yet I still hadn’t really talked to any of the people in my class, apart from Emmi and Grace. It was all down to Shaz. She looked down her nose at me whenever I passed her and every time I was about to pluck up the courage to talk to one of my classmates, I’d always seem to see her hovering in the background and sneering.
    At least I had Grace and Emmi. Shaz couldn’t touch either of them. That is, she didn’t seem to really notice Grace, who I often saw in quiet conversation with some of the other, gentler-looking members of our year – and as for Emmi . . . well, now I’d spent more time with her, I couldn’t imagine anyone putting Emmi down. She was so super-confident all the time.
    If Shaz had said anything bitchy about her, Emmi would just have said something even more cutting right back. And she wouldn’t have cared.
    I cared far too much – and Shaz knew it.
    At last Saturday arrived. I turned up at Emmi’s house at five p.m. with two bags of clothes options to try on. Grace was already there, looking pretty and demure in shorts with tights and a sweet, scallop-edged T-shirt over a long-sleeved, high-necked top. Emmi pursed her lips at the high neck of the top, insisting Grace take it off and put on some mascara and lip gloss. But she saved her main attentions for me.

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    ‘You can’t wear any of this,’ she said despairingly, looking up from the second of my plastic bags. ‘All these tops are totally shapeless.’
    I could feel my face burning and looked away.
    Emmi’s room was twice the size of mine, but then so was her house. She had a huge closet crammed with clothes and a big four-poster bed complete with swags and scatter cushions in a range of dark, sophisticated colours. My bedroom at home – with its daisy-chain pattern on the curtains and bright blue duvet – seemed childish by comparison.
    ‘You’ll have to borrow something of mine,’ Emmi said. She was across the room in an instant, rifling through the mass of clothes that hung in her wardrobe. ‘Here.’ She held out a tiny green vest top with skinny straps and a star pattern on the front.
    ‘You’d look good in this.’
    I stared at her, open-mouthed. ‘It’s too small,’ I said.
    Emmi frowned. ‘No it’s not.’
    We stared at each other. For a second I wondered if Emmi was winding me up . . . was it possible that she wanted me to wear something I’d look awful in?
    ‘You think you’re bigger