Poor Little Dead Girls Read Online Free PDF Page A

wearing didn’t really say late-night studying in the stacks.
    Sadie closed her eyes and imagined she was back in her old room in Portland, with its boxy IKEA furniture and ancient yellow eyelet bedspread. It was her mom’s favorite color, and she had never been able to bring herself to change it after she died. She saw her four walls against the insides of her eyelids — on one was a signed poster of the Northwestern Lacrosse team, and on another was a collage of photos and a cheesy Van Gogh reprint she couldn’t seem to get rid of. She gathered her blanket closer around her body, held the image in her head, and finally she slept.

Chapter 4
    Sadie tugged at the hem of her skirt as she made her way up the chapel’s stone steps. She and Jessica wore the same navy blue and green uniform, but they couldn’t have looked more different. Jessica’s looked tailored and preppy, and Sadie felt like she was dressed up for Halloween in a sixth-grader’s cheerleading uniform.
    The pleated skirt was too short — it hit her awkwardly just one too many inches above the knee — and her polo shirt was somehow simultaneously too baggy and too tight in all the wrong places. She looked down as she climbed the last step and wrinkled her nose. The white knee socks were really more overgrown girl scout than oversized cheerleader, but that really didn’t help.
    She had stared at herself in the mirror for at least five minutes that morning, trying to decide how to make her outfit look slightly less ridiculous. She tried sagging the skirt or rolling it up, but everything just made it worse. She could unbutton one more of the polo shirt’s buttons and look like a cheap extra in a bad music video, or one less and look like a bible-camp counselor who was desperately trying to hide her chest acne. She was pretty sure neither of those was the ideal first impression. She finally decided to err on the prude side until she saw the other girls, but now she was in full panic mode.
    Jessica stopped in front of the chapel door and sighed. “I swear Sadie, if you mess with that button again, I’m going to smack you.” She glanced down at Sadie’s chest and grinned. “And go with the skanky version. No one buttons up.”
    Once inside, Sadie felt like she was back in the dining room, walking the gauntlet toward the lacrosse table. As she and Jessica made their way down the aisle, each row’s chatter quieted as they passed, then began again — louder this time — with a flutter of manicured hands over glossy lips.
    “When does this new-girl stuff wear off?”
    Jessica shrugged. “Don’t worry, in a few days, everyone will go back to ignoring you, and it’ll be just like you’re invisible.”
    Were those really her two choices? Sadie looked to her left and saw Thayer sitting with Charlotte, a platinum blonde Sadie recognized from the lacrosse table. Both of them had hair perfectly curled in waves that looked like they took hours. Sadie raised a hand to wave, but Jessica grabbed her arm and pulled her into an empty pew.
    Sadie settled in, taking in the soaring, vaulted ceiling and the floor-to-ceiling stained-glass windows. “So do we really have to do this every Friday?”
    Jessica wrinkled her nose and pulled out a purple phone. “Yup. Every Friday morning, and again for special events and holidays. It blows, but at least our first class is a half hour shorter.” She looked toward the ceiling and closed her eyes in mock prayer. “And thank god for Twitter.”
    Sadie giggled. “Tell God I don’t think I can Tweet on my crappy flip phone.” Jessica just grinned and started poking at her phone’s touchscreen. “Holy crap, Charlotte just tweeted the most blatant humble brag ever.”
    Sadie slumped down farther in the pew and gazed up at the ceiling. Despite how weird everything at Keating was, she had to admit starting school on a Friday was a merciful touch. No matter what happened today, at least she would have forty-eight hours to get