Confessions of an Almost-Girlfriend Read Online Free PDF

red Prius that Tracy’s dad got
her for her sixteenth birthday in July, points at me. Tracy rolls
her eyes and leans into the backseat, clearing away some junk.
Tracy wouldn’t appreciate my calling her magazines junk, but
they’ve been stomped on and sat on, and pages have been torn
out and folded over and marked up, so they’re junk in my book.
Last year was all about Teen Vogue and Lucky, but this year Trace
is reading Vogue and Elle, with the occasional InStyle thrown in,
“because not everyone gets couture.”
    Thanks to my trusty PSAT app, I surreptitiously learned that couture means custom-made, high-fashion clothes. I have to admit
that there are some occasional topic-specific gaps in my vocabulary. My dad—Mr. Vocabulary himself—would not have been
pleased. But the fact that I have a PSAT app on my phone would
have gone a long way toward redeeming me in his eyes, I’m sure.
    “Conrad,” Tracy says as she extricates herself from the backseat to move her magazines into the trunk, “Rose ended up in
the pool for you. So maybe try a little gratitude. Sit,” she commands, pointing to the mostly clean backseat and dropping several torn-up GQ s in the process. “Love your shoes, by the way.
Stuff paper towels in them when you get home so they dry in
the right shape. They’re Gucci, right? And those pants are Marc
Jacobs, aren’t they?”
    Conrad doesn’t miss a beat. “Stop talking about my clothes.
You’re making me self-conscious.”
Tracy looks shocked, like she can’t conceive of a world in
which Conrad wouldn’t want to talk about fashion. I think this
is actually less about stereotyping and more about Tracy forgetting that not everyone cares as deeply and passionately about
fashion as she does. Whatever she’s into takes over her entire
worldview. She was like that with cheerleading last year. And
Matt, unfortunately.
Getting dumped by Matt after she lost her virginity to him
was the best thing that ever happened to Tracy. Well, okay, not
the best thing. Actually, it was terrible. But as soon as she was
forced to accept what a loser Matt had become, she realized she
was spending too much time worrying about what he—and everyone else—thought of her. She vowed never to do that again,
and she hasn’t looked back since. Her obsession with fashion
isn’t just about magazines and being pretty. Tracy wants to be
a designer someday, or an editor at a fashion magazine, or a…
something. According to her, her education has already started.
She reads every fashion magazine she can get her hands on, follows about twenty different blogs, and spends more hours on
Lookbook than most gamers spend playing Call of Duty 17, or
whatever number they’re up to.
I envy her. She found her thing and is already figuring out
how to do it.
Actually, if I think about it, I’m not that far behind her—at
least not in terms of knowing what my thing is. I just have to…
start doing it.
When I was thinking of auditioning for Damn Yankees, I sang
in front of the mirror and discovered that I look like a giant freak.
When my mom’s shrink, Caron, asked why I hadn’t auditioned
after I’d said I was going to, I just shrugged. Then she declared
that I’m depressed.
Brilliant, right? But Ms. Shrinky-Dink had a point. I was excited about auditioning. And I was disappointed—in myself—
when I chickened out. So I’m going to that Anything Goes audition,
even if I look like the world’s weirdest weirdo when I sing.
“What are you doing with all this shit?” Conrad says, looking
down at the issues of GQ that Tracy dropped.
“I like fashion,” Tracy answers, sounding a little peeved as she
grabs the magazines and puts them on top of her pile. She dumps
the magazines in her trunk and takes out the blanket from the
monstrous roadside emergency kit that her dad bought for the
car—there are enough supplies in there to survive simultaneous
natural disasters. “Here,” she says,