Double-Crossed Read Online Free PDF Page B

kidding.”
    I looked at Oscar and saw that he was laughing hysterically. He was the one who had played a joke on me!
    â€œVery funny!” I said, and pushed him playfully. (That was a push, not a punch.) I thought he was going to push me back, but he didn’t. He put his arm around me instead. That was a total surprise. My dad puts his arm around me when we walk along the boardwalk to get ice cream cones. And Ryan puts his arm around me when he’s trying to get me to clear the table on his night. But Oscar was the first boy my age to ever put his arm around me in a serious kind of way. I didn’t know if he was trying to be romantic, or if that’s just the kind of thing people do in El Salvador when they’re being friendly. It made me feel weird and uncomfortable. I could feel myself get all tense around the shoulder area. He must have felt it, too, because he took his arm down right away.
    Ryan, who makes friends as easily as fish swim in water, had already buddied up with Eddie.
    â€œWe could use some guy energy here,” he was saying to him as we made our way onto the deck. “This is what I’ve had to listen to for the last two hours.”
    Raising his voice about two octaves, he started doing a series of impressions that actually sounded a lot like Lauren, Jillian, Brooke, and Lily.
    â€œHow cute is this top!” he squealed.
    â€œOMG, you look totally awesome in that.”
    â€œIs there lip gloss on my teeth?”
    â€œDoes this make me look too fat?”
    â€œDoes this make me look too skinny?”
    Then he dropped the squeaky voices and pretended to be barfing, collapsing in a heap on the wooden deck in front of us. Eddie looked a little startled, but Oscar had already caught on to Ryan’s twisted sense of humor.
    â€œYou are very funny,” he said. “I hate to leave, but now I am going to take a ride in Tyler’s Batman car.”
    â€œYou’re out of luck, dude,” Ryan said. “He vamoosed. The poor guy went running out of here as soon as he finished taking their pictures. I think if he heard one more “OMG,” his ears would have shriveled up and dropped right off.”
    â€œWhere did the girls go?” Eddie asked, looking out onto the beach but seeing only the shadowy outline of my dad on the sand next to the volleyball court, lighting the barbecue.
    â€œThey’re inside, changing back into their regular clothes.”
    â€œWe were, but we decided not to,” Lauren called, strutting out onto the deck from inside the kitchen. “We wanted to wait and show Sammie and Alicia and Eddie our top-model look.”
    Boy, that made me mad.
    â€œExcuse me, Lauren,” I blurted out, “but there’s another person here, and his name is Oscar.”
    â€œYou don’t have to get all huffy, Sammie. I see him. I’m not blind.” Then she looked a little startled and glanced at Oscar. “No offense to disabled people.”
    Really? Did she just say that? Yes, she actually did.
    Lauren was wearing jeans so tight they looked like they were sprayed on and a gold shimmery top the exact color of her gold sandals and huge gold hoop earrings. Even I, who am not a Lauren Wadsworth fan, had to admit she looked unbelievably great. She seemed so glamorous that I was really surprised when she stuck two fingers into her mouth and let out a loud guy-size whistle. Where did
that
come from?
    â€œTop models,” she called. “Report to the runway.”
    One by one, the girls came out doing their runway walks. Jillian had on so much eye makeup I was surprised she could even hold her eyelids up. Brooke had gone for the military look in honor of her boyfriend, the General (who, by the way, isn’t one, but they call him that anyway because he always wears camouflage pants). She was in cutoff camouflage shorts with high-heeled pumps, which I’m pretty sure are not the best shoe choice if you’re in