Lunatic Fringe Read Online Free PDF Page A

beatific smile, angelic
curls bobbing against her cheeks.
    “ You running late?” Duane
asked. Lexie looked into his eyes, then glanced away. She felt like
a trapped animal, desperate for a burrow, a shrub, or a stone
beneath which to crawl.
    “ I didn’t know you were
going to be in this class,” Duane continued.
    “ Yeah, well. Lots to
learn,” Lexie said.
    “ No kidding,” the brunette
said, rocking back and forth on her heels.
    “ Why are you in it?” she
asked Duane, trying to ignore the curious gazes of the women
standing next to him.
    “ Like you, lots to learn.
Way better than learning about the world through a series of wars
and genocides. Plus, I’ve been considering gynecology as a backup,
so this’ll be a good education for me.”
    “ Like a mechanic that
doesn’t own a car,” the one with the curls joked, enough under her
breath to indicate at least partial conviction.
    “ No ma’am, more like a
piano virtuoso cursed with deafness,” he said with mocking
self-pity. The pin-up cracked her gum, ignoring Duane’s paltry
attempts at charm.
    “ You’re Lexie?” the
sweet-faced one asked, her perfect white teeth glinting in the
sun.
    Lexie froze like a startled
squirrel.
    “ You know her?” Duane
asked.
    She continued, ignoring Duane. “Blythe
told us she met you last week.”
    “ How do you guys know each
other?” the pin-up asked Lexie.
    “ We went to high school
together in Wolf Creek,” Duane answered.
    Lexie smoothed her hand over her hair,
trying create some order out of the uncombed mess. Her migraine had
swelled to the edges of her eyes. She hated being compared to
Duane. Her averageness was only magnified by Duane’s perfection,
and she feared these two girls would make assumptions about her
based on Duane’s charisma. She shifted her weight as the girls gave
her the once-over.
    “ I’m Jenna.” The angelic
girl placed an open palm on her chest, bare and freckled where it
peeked out of the scooped neckline of her cotton tunic. Her skin
was the color of birch, her eyes a yellow-tinged blue.
    “ I’m Hazel,” the pin-up
said, before blowing a bubble with her gum. Lexie wondered if
Hazel’s eyes were, indeed, hazel, but couldn’t tell, as the giant
sunglasses swallowed up the whole of her small face except for her
berry-stained lips, and clear, pale forehead.
    “ You’re coming to the
brunch, then?” Jenna asked, a brightness in her eyes that indicated
either genuine loveliness or high-grade pharmaceuticals.
    After enough silence dangled from that
question to make everyone uncomfortable, Hazel chimed in
irreverently, “Oh my god, you’re so shy.”
    Lexie spoke louder than necessary, “I’m
not shy.” Out of a need to disprove the accusation, she continued
the conversation. “Will you be there?”
    “ Yeah, of course. We all
will. We’re a family,” Jenna nodded earnestly. Bounce , bounce went the curls.
    Family? Lexie thought. What an odd way to refer to
friends. Terrifying. Exciting.
    “ Come to the brunch. You’ll
meet the rest,” Jenna said, nodding and bouncing.
    “ The rest of what?” Lexie
asked.
    “ The Pack,” Jenna said,
tilting her head. “You did meet Blythe, right?” Her forehead was
scrunched up with authentic concern.
    Lexie stumbled to answer, “Yeah, sure.
She and her, uh, Mitch, helped me move in last week.”
    “ She invited you over,
yeah?” Jenna said a bit too slow, as if struggling to communicate
with a non-English speaker.
    “ Brunch. Saturday.” Lexie
tried to prove she wasn’t as stupid as she suddenly
felt.
    Hazel chimed in, “We’re the Pack, and
we call our house the Den. I think it’s bullshit tribal jingoism,
but whatever.”
    “ Hazel,” Jenna scolded, but
Hazel dismissed the reprimand with a puff of air and a flick of her
hand.
    Duane laughed. “A pack of
hyenas?”
    The girls bristled. Lexie noticed.
Duane didn’t.
    “ Alright, enough of you,”
Hazel said.
    Hazel zeroed-in on Lexie’s