Diva Read Online Free PDF Page A

type of music
    they play on the University of Miami station would be better, but that's not what average kids listen to.
    And I want to be average.
    I just *know* if I went to Miami HS of the Arts, I wouldn't have to do this anymore! I could actually
    *admit* to liking opera. I could admit to not being average.

    "Dude!" Ashley stares at my Wendy's taco salad as if it just sprouted legs and started to walk off its Styrofoam bed. "You're not actually going to eat that?"
    It's Sunday, a week after I got my letter. I still haven't told anyone but Mom (since that went so well).
    Dealing with her parentnoia is more than enough without having to endure the Seven Stages of Grief from
    my friends.
    "Um, I was thinking about it," I say. Seems like a strange question, considering I ordered and now own said taco salad. "I mean, why not? It's a salad."
    "It's a taco salad," Peyton says, like that explains everything.
    "So?" I'm missing something here, some Rosetta Stone that will translate what they're saying into English.
    I'm guessing I ordered the wrong thing.
    When I used to see Peyton and Ashley around school, I couldn't tell them apart. Now that we've been
    friends almost a year, it's still hard—identical flat stomachs in crop tops (but Ashley's top is plain, while
    Peyton's says CHEERLEADERS ARE ATHLETES TOO!), identical noses (though I now know that
    Peyton's is real, while Ashley brought a photo of Peyton to the plastic surgeon who corrected her deviated
    septum), wardrobes, fake Southern accents, and not-quite-identical streaked hair (Ashley's is redder).
    Only by spending an insane amount of time with them do you see a difference: Peyton's mostly harmless.
    Ashley's potentially lethal.
    But they're my friends. When the whole ugly Nick thing happened, I thought they'd take his side since they
    were really his friends to begin with, and leave me with no one. So when Peyton and Ashley stuck by me,
    I was grateful. Confused, but grateful.
    "So it's… never mind, Cat. It looks yummy." Ashley hands me a packet of sour cream that came with the salad. "Wouldn't want to forget this."
    I lift my plastic fork, and Peyton yelps, like she might throw herself on the salad to save me from it. "She means it's a salad with six hundred seventy calories—two hundred ninety from fat—thirty-two fat grams
    and eighty-five carbohydrate grams with the sour cream. Without it…"
    She keeps going. I tune out, listening to the elevator music version of a Kelly Clarkson song and trying to
    remember if Peyton was the one who failed business math.
    "If you eat that," she finishes, "you can't eat anything else the rest of the day!"
    I think about the bagel and cream cheese I had only two hours ago and wave off the sour cream Ashley's
    holding out. "Too fattening."
    "You only lose fifty calories and three and a half fat grams by not having sour cream," Peyton says. "But you lose two hundred and ten calories, nine fat grams, and twenty-nine carb grams if you leave off the
    chips."
    But then what would be the point of having a taco salad?
    Ashley squeezes half of her packet of fat-free French dressing onto her spring mix salad (I bet Peyton
    knows the numbers on that one too), and says, "Oh, leave her alone, Pey. Let her eat whatever she wants."
    She glances at my thighs, then her own skeletal ones. "I need to lose ten pounds. I'm so fat."
    "You're so not," I say. She knows she isn't, but smiles. It's a game they play, the I'm so fat game, which you can only play it if you've never been a fatgirl in your life. I leave the chips and pick at the lettuce. I lift my legs so my thighs won't sploosh out on the plastic seat. "I wish I had your thighs," I add, and Ashley nods, all happy.
    "I went shopping yesterday…" Peyton rolls her eyes. "With my mom."
    "Mallicide!" Ashley clutches Peyton's arm
    "Did she at least buy you anything good?" I ask, knowing how her brain works.
    Negatory. It's really hard for me to find anything, what with my size and all. I wear a