Love Her Madly Read Online Free PDF Page A

tell.”
    â€œYeah? Well, so are you. You’re like Cinderella with cigarettes. And probably drugs.”
    â€œThat was my nickname in high school. Cynderella.” She lit the cigarette with a salmon pink lighter and inhaled, lost in her own thoughts. Then she quickly ashed it into the sink and focused her spotlight-blue eyes on me. “Listen, I’m planning a trip to the big beach tomorrow. You wanna come?”
    I opened my mouth to accept the invitation, but she was already exiting the bathroom.
    â€œYou’ll ride with me. I think some of those miscreants out there are going, too. It’ll be fun.”
    We walked back to the dorms together, chatting easily. She peppered me with questions about myself; the same investigative treatment I underwent with Annie a few days earlier, except a thousand times more fun. She interrogated me about my taste in music, books, movies, the countries I most wanted to visit, my ideal man. I found myself answering with surprising candor. I’d say something from the heart, and if she went quiet, I’d begin bracing for the inevitable rejection. But with Cyn, miraculously, it didn’t happen. She wasn’t judging me, and we were discovering loads of common ground.
    Our dorms had been designed to be easily converted into apartments if our school failed, so each room had private entrances and its own en suite bathroom. It was a nice setup, even if our walls were a little moldy and the air conditioners leaked onto the carpets. Cyn’s room was on the second floor, like mine.As we ascended the open-air staircase, I saw a magazine cut-out of a wide-eyed toad taped to her door. Written above it in block letters were the words LICK ME!
    â€œNice frog,” I said.
    â€œIt’s a toad. Bufo alvarius . Its venom gets you high. My roommate hates Mr. Bufo already.” She opened the door a crack, revealing a dark room. “She’s the early-to-bed type.”
    â€œMine’s the always-in-bed type.”
    â€œWhat? She sleeps around?” Cyn whispered.
    I had to laugh. “No. Just a lot. She sleeps a lot.”
    â€œSounds fun. See ya tomorrow.” She pulled me in for a casual, one-armed hug, just like I’d seen girls do in the wild, before slipping silently into her room.
    When I returned to my dark room and saw myself in the bathroom mirror, I noticed that my face was flushed, and not from the booze. I felt giddy. I felt great. It was almost like falling in love.

    The next day, I sacrificed my top sheet for use as a beach blanket, and Cyn, Max, Lila, and I squeezed together along its narrow expanse. No one had a beach umbrella, and even in late January, the sun was intense. Lila and I fetishistically applied sunscreen while Max looked on, manifestly disappointed to not have been asked for help with those hard-to-reach spots. Cyn slouched lazily under a cowboy hat and an oversize men’s Oxford shirt, her bronzed legs stretched out into the sand.
    Max fiddled with a boom box so ancient that it lacked a compact disc player. No one had any tapes, so he scrolled through the dial, switching stations as often as he redirected the focus of his flirtatious banter. At first, it was entertaining. He was like someone’s cute little brother brought along for the ride, desperate to commandeer attention. Lila, having explainedat length (truly, at length) that she had a boyfriend in Miami, batted back his weak come-ons like a churlish Siamese cat, while Cyn openly mocked him. Finding no success with either of them, his attentions turned to me.
    He rolled in my direction, his eyebrows raised above the limits of his sunglasses, making them appear to be caterpillars in free fall. “So what’s with the one-piece, Gloria?” he asked, reaching out to touch my racing suit. “Your synchronized swimming partner showing up later?”
    â€œNo. My fur bikini just happens to be at the cleaners.”
    Cyn snorted behind her