Killing Britney Read Online Free PDF Page B

shrug. “I’ll catch you later.”
    He ambled out of the car as though nothing had happened and obnoxiously threw her the peace sign as he walked away.
    Britney sped off. She was preoccupied with the hockey wives, worried about what she’d missed. They must have been trying to get her attention for some reason. She wished she could call them, but she’d forgotten her cell phone. And by now there was no way of knowing where they’d be.
    At least there was Melissa. It was doubtful that she’d know the dirt since she didn’t have any connection with that crowd, but at least Britney could complain about Adam to her. And she might have some more good advice about Ricky.

six
    Melissa’s house was in a transient section of town right near the UW campus. Most everybody who lived there were college students and weirdos. It wasn’t unusual to see them having snowball fights in their underwear or smoking pot out on their front porches. The houses were a hodgepodge of styles, a lot of duplexes and two-story nondescript apartment buildings, the paint peeling, old furniture piled in the yard. Reggae music or, worse, jazz could be heard coming from the different buildings at all hours of the night and day. The streets were lined with cars so old and beat up that Britney always wondered if they’d been abandoned. The trees, elms and oaks and chestnuts, were large and shady, and when their leaves turned yellow and began to blanket the ground, you could almost feel the education in the air.
    When she arrived at Melissa’s pale blue clapboard house, Britney stormed right in without bothering to knock. That was the kind of friendship they had. They were like sisters—or they had been until this year. Britney had grown a little apart from Melissa, not because she wanted to; she was just so busy now with Ricky and all the new friends she’d made through him. Melissa’s parents were professors at the university, and she had inherited their awesome intelligence.
    “It’s you!” said Melissa when she saw Britney standing in the doorway. Britney let Melissa pull her inside.
    The house was a mess as always. Every surface—the coffee table, the end table, the plush cushioned chair as well as the rocking chair, and even the floor—was buried by papers and books. The bookshelves were full, and whatever space wasn’t packed with bits of text was cluttered with the knickknacks Melissa’s mother collected on her travels throughout the third world. Britney stared at an abstract painting, an ugly canvas covered in blobs of thick brown and green and purple paint. Supposedly it had been painted by someone famous, but Britney had never heard of the artist. As far as she was concerned, it was, like so much of the stuff in Melissa’s house, junk.
    Melissa’s red hair frizzed out in unruly curls and she hid her eyes behind studious cat’s-eye glasses. She could be cute, Britney was sure of it, if she just tried a little, but instead she clomped around in beat-up combat boots and wore shapeless overalls and lumpy sweaters in all the worst colors.
    “I’ve been trying to call you all day, but your dad said you were out. Is there something wrong with your cell phone?”
    “I forgot it at home.”
    “I figured.” Melissa held Britney’s hand out in front of her and looked her up and down as if she were searching for a hidden message. “Are you okay?”
    “I don’t know. I guess I just wanted to be alone today.”
    Releasing Britney’s hand, Melissa let the topic drop. “You’re really upset, huh?”
    “I am upset. I’ve been carting that idiot Adam all over town and I ran into the other hockey wives—”
    “It probably doesn’t help that you were fighting with Ricky right before it happened.”
    Britney shuddered.
    “Let’s not talk about that,” she said, suddenly repulsed by the idea of rehashing last night with Melissa again.
    She felt dizzy.
    “I mean, it’s going to be harder for you to find closure now,” said