Best Frenemies Read Online Free PDF

like it,” Cassidy said, nodding. “Make sure you put in that one story you told me about that kid who set himself on fire.”
    â€œOh my goodness, poor Todd,” Alice said, laughing.
    After all the permission slips had finally been turned in, nobody had been more excited about going into biology lab and “messing stuff up” than Todd Tian, who Alice was sure was either secretly a pyromaniac or a future mad scientist.
    Not ten minutes had passed since the students had filed into the lab when the students heard “Uh, Ms. Crawford?” from the back of the room. The students and the teacher all turned around to see Todd, in his protective apron and glasses (which he had made fun of for being “weak,” because it was required that the students wear them each lab, even if they were just growing mold on Jell-O), looking down with alarm at a small but persistent flame that crept up his apron like a friendly snake.
    Todd was physically fine (once Ms. Crawford, astoundingly cool under pressure, had thrown a fire blanket over him), but he was suspended from participating in labs for two weeks and any time he drew attention to himself in class, he was teased withpeople saying, “Uh, Ms. Crawford? Do you have a fire extinguisher?” or “Uh, Ms. Crawford? Do you think I’m hot?”
    If he was lucky, people would forget about it by high school, but Alice hoped he wasn’t ruling out the possibility of leaving town and changing his name to completely escape it.
    â€œYou guys got to play with fire in your first week?” Cassidy asked.
    â€œThat’s the hilarious thing,” Alice said, putting a sticker next to the Todd story and illustrating it with a red pen. She drew flames coming out of it. It was rather beautiful, actually. “We weren’t. We’re studying ocean currents this week. We still haven’t figured out where or how he did it.”
    â€œWell, I’m jealous,” said Cassidy.
    â€œJealous that you didn’t set yourself on fire?”
    â€œNo, that you guys even have access to fire,” Cassidy said. “Do you know what we’re doing in our bio lab? Growing bean sprouts! And I don’t think we’re even allowed to touch the sprouts. We just get to look at them and maybe measure them.”
    â€œWell, if you’re lucky, maybe you’ll get to eat them too,” Alice joked.
    â€œDear diary, today I ate a bean sprout. It was thebest day of my life,” Cassidy said dreamily. She grabbed the notebook and flipped through it.
    â€œOoh,” she said, stabbing a robin’s-egg-blue-painted fingernail at the page where Alice had drawn the seating chart the first day. “Nikki Wilcox. Did I tell you that she’s in my ballet class?”
    â€œ She’s in ballet?” Alice asked in disbelief. After watching Cassidy dance, and seeing the way she lit up the stage with her smiling eyes and graceful dips and jumps, Alice couldn’t even picture Nikki participating in something so fun or pretty as ballet. Alice would love to dance herself, but she had the coordination of a moose, plus she suffered from crippling stage fright, ever since a recital in third grade when she went to play the piano and discovered, to her horror, that the piano hadn’t been tuned.
    She had played the Mozart minuet perfectly, but it sounded like she was playing it with her elbows. She had gone and cried in the bathroom for an hour afterwards.
    â€œYes, she is,” Cassidy confirmed. She stuck her legs out and began stretching, the way she did whenever ballet came up in conversation. Alice couldn’t decide which was more impressive, Cassidy’s flexibility or the floral-pattered leggings she was wearing. “She’s notbad either, so far that I can tell, but she always has a stank face on.”
    â€œStank face?” Alice laughed.
    â€œI heard an eighth grader say that,” Cassidy confided.