Everyone's Favorite Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

instead of dangling it in my face like a carrot."
    Flora giggled and covered her mouth.
    "What's so funny?"
    She waved her hand and shook her head.  "Sorry, you said something else last time."
    "What?  What did I say?"
    "Something besides carrot."
    "Dick?"
    Here she burst into a fit of giggles again.  I watched the subtle bouncing of her unsupported breasts, and for no particular reason I started tickling her.  Based on her reaction, I could tell I hadn't done this before.  She screamed so loud it made my ears ring, and though I wanted to pin her down and tickle her till we both wound up naked, I was too intrigued by my revelation:
    If there was a way out of this situation, it had to be through James.
    But how?
    Flora's skin was flushed.  She lay there panting, watching me distrustfully, flinching at my slightest movement.  On the television a masked killer with a knife chased a young blond drolly through her house.
    "We have to get to James somehow.  If we can get to James, we can get to Juidy--and Judy's our only hope."
    Puppy dog eyes stared up at me.  "What about Patton?"
    "Fuck Patton."
    This scared her more than anything, the way I talked about Patton now--or rather the way I mostly chose not to talk about Patton.  He was all she knew.  For all intents and purposes, Patton was Flora's father, despite also being a clone of his former lover.
    Yeah, fuck Patton.  Really.
    "It doesn't matter anyway," Flora said.  "James won't help us."
    "Yeah, no shit.  But he's our only contact.  We'll just have to make him help us.  Somehow."
    But a "somehow" wasn't occurring to me.  I sat there playing scenarios through my mind, trying to come up with some piece of leverage, some particle of dirt on James I could use against him.
    Nothing.
    "I'm stumped," I said.  "Where does the conversation usually go from here?"
    Flora took in a breath, still lying on her back.  "This is where you give up and take my clothes off."
    What was more shocking than what she said was the fact that she looked like she wanted me to do it.  I saw innocent seduction in her glossy blue eyes, a more virginal variety of the look on my first Flora's face when Mr. Moses opened the box in Ted's bedroom.  She even tugged at the waistband of her shorts with her thumb.  Awkward though she was in her attempt to look sexy, it only made her all the more desirable.
    It didn't occur to me to find it odd that Flora now suddenly wanted me, even though she'd expressed fear of this moment earlier and had avoided me and my bitchiness most of the day.
    My curiosity was getting the better of me.  What had stopped me from pressing Flora's button the first two times?  Would this Flora feel different from the last one?  Would we survive with no one around to pull us apart?
    This would be suicide by sex.
    Fuck it.  We're dead anyway.
    I put my hand on her thigh and let me fingers glide up over her stomach, between her breasts, and finally to the nape of her neck.  I gripped her small shoulder, ran my thumb down her bicep until I felt the tiny line of scar tissue where her device had been implanted.  I could feel the lump of the button, like that of a retractable ink pen, only embedded beneath human flesh.
    "Push it," Flora said with a tone that made me fear I already had.
    A drop of Libido and a dash of Love.
    How did I stop myself before?
    "Just do it," Flora said, a hitch in her voice.  "Please Melissa."
    "We'll die."
    She nodded, wincing, her cheeks now wet and red.
    "At least it w-won't h-hurt."
    As opposed to what?  What was she so afraid of that death seemed the better option--albeit a painless, in fact pleasurable death?
    It struck me all at once, and I knew immediately Flora was thinking the same thing, which meant I'd had this revelation twice before.
    "Why didn't you tell me?" I asked.
    Flora covered her face with both hands and turned over, sobbing so hard her body trembled.
    The last night I remembered was so clear in my mind--probably because I