Everyone's Favorite Girl Read Online Free PDF

at night, but we wouldn't pay attention.  Instead, we'd talk about the future, then boys, then the past.  And, inevitably, when the lights went off, we'd end on the subject of sex.
    I used to have the kind of sleepovers boys love to imagine girls have.  Sometimes there was kissing.  Sometimes a little more.
    It was my mother's doing.  She raised me on one guiding principle: I needed to learn how to make a man happy.  All other education was superfluous.
    "Remember, it's all about him, making him feel powerful.  You can't just give in to him.  You have to make him want you enough to come after you.  He has to conquer you, and when he does, his reward must be worth it.  That's why you need to know what you're doing, but that doesn't mean start having sex with boys.  Your reputation plays a big role in this.  There's one tried and true way to kill two birds with one stone.  Practice with your girlfriends.  You'll learn how to be comfortable with another, and when boys find out what you've been up to they won't be able to stop thinking about you."
    Sure enough, all through high school rumors echoed through the halls about what happened when girls stayed over at my house.  Most girls grew to despise me, while boys tripped over themselves just to get a booth near me in the cafeteria.  It wasn't because I was any more attractive than the popular girls.  I wasn't.  Not by a long shot.  But I spent more of my time figuring out how to make myself appealing to the right guys at the right time.
    That's how I hooked Ted before I even graduated high school.
    How I wound up in a miserable, one-sided marriage.
    How I ended up here.
    My mother had taught me audacity, and I'd learned well.
    Flora brought a bowl of popcorn the size of a small laundry basket, along with drinks, a bag of pretzels, and a handful of bite-size candy bars, leftovers from before we were denied such luxuries.
    We agreed on a movie--some cheap and poorly acted horror spoof--but lost interest before the opening credits sequence finished.  Instead, we ate popcorn and candy bars and talked about our predicament.
    Flora sparked the conversation by flopping over on her back, swatting me in the face with her hair, and, with a sharp, almost nervous exhale, saying, "Okay, how do we get out of this?"
    I sat up beside her and stole a glance over her body: long, smooth legs still warm from the shower, tiny running shorts with the waistband hugging her just below her hip bones, a sliver of exposed midriff below her skin-tight, mildly transparent shirt, through which I noted the darker shade of her nipples.
    And while my description of Flora exudes sexuality, the Flora I was staring at harbored no such characteristic.  Provocative, yes, but too naive to realize it.  Imagine a cute little Shih Tzu in a zombie apocalypse, merrily tromping across the yard to shower affection on a thing that wants to eat it.
    "We can't escape," I said, resting my hand on her ribcage.
    "You say that every time.  Followed by . . ."
    She rolled her head over to look at me and I shrugged.
    "I have no idea what I'm supposed to say.  We can't escape.  Not without help, and we're cut off from everyone."
    " There you go.  And then . . ." She had a strange, edgy tone now.  I didn't like it.  Whatever I'd said in our previous conversations I, of course, didn't remember.  It felt like she was mad at me for what I was about to say.  At the same time, she was coaching me into saying it.
    "I'm lost, Flora."
    "We can't escape," she repeated, sounding like an inept babysitter impatiently reciting instructions to a slow child--or maybe this was just how I perceived her.  Maybe my brain-fucked mind added all the harsh and distasteful details, and right now Flora was really just terrified.  "Not without help," she said, "and we're cut off from everyone.  Everyone ."
    "Everyone except James," I said.  "You know, it'll be a lot easier if you just tell me what we've already talked about