Saving Francesca Read Online Free PDF Page A

Siobhan Sullivan went away for a couple of weeks and we thought, let’s make friends with her, because I think this girl needs saving.”
    When Siobhan Sullivan’s grandfather died in Year Seven, she went up north to stay with her nan. They were the loneliest days of my life. Not one person would let me hang out with them. “It’s because you’re a show-off,” my future friends explained to me gently. “If you stop showing off, we’ll be your friends.”
    “And we made her ours,” Michaela says, hugging me to her affectionately.
    That’s what my friends do. They’re press agents. They give me publicity, and for three months at Sebastian’s I haven’t had any, so it’s a bit of a relief to be on the news again.
    “And the other girl?”
    “Justine Kalinsky, poor thing . She came new in Year Eight. Do you remember in Year Eight?” Natalia asks the others.
    “Oh my God, Year Eight. Yeah,” Michaela says.
    “This one time in Year Eight we had to write on butcher’s paper how we’d like people to see us. Remember ours? We were like, ‘We don’t want people to see us as leaders or heroes or anything out of the ordinary. We just want them to see us as on their level.’ ”
    “But Justine Kalinsky gets up there, on her own, poor thing . And she says, ‘I’d like people to see me as their Rock.’ ”
    “And we killed ourselves laughing.”
    “Poor thing.”
    “What did she mean?” the Pius girl asks.
    “Who knows.”
    I don’t dare mention Tara Finke. Sluts and losers are tolerable to my friends. But a person with a social conscience is from Pluto. Once in Year Nine, Mia forced me to go to the Palm Sunday peace march and I had to walk alongside Tara Finke. Our photo got into the school news, and I didn’t hear the end of it for ages.
    A group of girls walk up the garden path and my friends scream and join them, leaving me with the Pius hanger-on, who confides that if it weren’t for my friends, she’d be lost.
    “They saved me from having to hang out with the losers,” she tells me with pride.
    “That’s what they do,” I explain politely.
    We smile at each other with nothing left to say.
    It’s a good night.
    When I see Justine Kalinsky at school, I feel guilty, as if I’ve spent the whole weekend bitching about her.
    “Tara’s talking to them about a basketball game.” Justine Kalinsky is giggling with excitement.
    I sit at my desk, listening to Eva Rodriguez and the rest of the Perpetua girls being persuaded by Tara Finke.
    “It’s the best idea ever,” Justine Kalinsky says, beaming.
    “Can you arrange it?” Eva Rodriguez asks.
    It takes a moment to realize that they’re talking to me.
    “Me?”
    “Justine reckons you’ve already set up communication with one of the House leaders.”
    Justine Kalinsky’s face is lit up in anticipation.
    “Which one?” one of the other Perpetua girls asks.
    “Trombal,” Tara Finke says.
    The girls are impressed.
    “I don’t think he actually likes dealing with her,” Tara Finke says. “But if we send someone new, he’ll interpret it as a lack of leadership on our part. Let’s be consistent.”
    “Plus we can’t send someone with a strong personality because the guys will get defensive. She’s perfect,” Siobhan Sullivan says. She’s enthusiastic about something for once, probably because it means getting into Lycra in front of a bunch of boys.
    “It’s not competitive. Just call it a friendly senior basketball game. It’ll give us some kind of profile.”
    “They’ll slaughter us,” one of the other girls argues.
    “I play rep,” Eva Rodriguez tells us. “Plus our school won the Eastern Region last year and five of us from that team are here.”
    “Ours got to the finals in the Inner-Western,” Justine Kalinsky pipes up. “Not that I was on the team, but Francesca was.”
    “I think it’s a great idea,” Tara Finke says. “This is our foot in the door, and we should grab the opportunity and show them that we