She's So Dead to Us Read Online Free PDF Page A

there it was. My eyes automatically flicked to Bedroom Boy. He flushed and looked away. Perfect. I loved a guy with no spine.
    “I just wanted to see you guys,” I told her.
    My brain struggled to reconcile this bitchy socialite with the cherubic Hannah Montana fan I’d left behind less than two years ago.
    “How are you?”
    “Oh, please,” Faith said. “Like you care?”
    “Faith,” Chloe scolded. That was Chloe. Always making sure that no situation grew too awkward or unpleasant. I had news for her. I was already feeling plenty awkward.
    “No! No way!” Faith said, incredulous. “You know the only reason she’s here is because she wants us to take pity on her. She thinks she can be, like, rich by association or something.”
    My skin stung as if I’d just endured a full-body slap. She couldn’t have been more wrong.
    “Like we’re really going to be your friend again after your dad stole from our families?” Faith said, turning on me again with narrowed eyes.
    “Stole?” I repeated, baffled. “He didn’t steal anything. Is that what you guys think? He—”
    “Oh, please! So that’s why my parents can’t retire and Shannen’s mom had to sell their shore house and get a job and Hammond has no trust fund?” Faith said, crossing her skinny little arms across her skinny little chest. “Did you know the Zeldinas and the Fallons had to move away and the Steins had to take over their grandparents’ place? They lost their homes thanks to you.”
    I swallowed hard. I knew my family had been hit hard by my dad’s mistake, but no one had ever told me exactly what it had meant for everyone else. Trust funds, retirements, and homes just gone? I had no idea.
    Okay, Ally. Deep breath. You didn’t do this to them. Your dad did. They can’t really take it out on you.
    “And don’t even get me started on what you did to Chloe,” Faith added before I could speak.
    Gravity reversed itself. I looked at Chloe. She couldn’t know, could she? Faith didn’t mean—
    “All right. That’s enough,” Shannen interrupted, speaking up finally.
    Faith was dumbfounded. “Shannen, you’re not gonna let her—”
    “Faith, please,” Chloe implored. “I don’t want to make a scene.”
    “Too late,” someone in the crowd muttered, earning a round of uncomfortable laughter.
    “It’s okay,” Shannen said. “Everyone, just chill.”
    Shannen stepped in front of me. The girl who used to challenge me to swim races and paint my toenails in rainbow colors and name stars with me at sleepovers in the backyard. The girl I’d comforted on the worst night of her life. The one whose deepest secrets I kept locked away in the bottom of my heart.
    “You need to go,” she said. “Now.”
    My heart couldn’t take this. “Shannen, I—”
    “Faith’s right. Take a look around. You don’t belong here.”
    Her dark eyes flicked over my Old Navy shorts and well-worn shoes in distaste. I felt sick. My friends were really going to reject me because of what my dad did? Because I wasn’t wearing the latest label? I looked around, desperate for someone to tell me this was a joke—to take my side. Chloe looked sad, almost sorry, before she trained her eyes on the floor. Bedroom Boy, meanwhile, stared right back at me, his jaw clenched with something unspoken, his blue eyes almost pleading. For what? For me to go? Or for me to never have come?
    Right then, the back door slid open, letting in shouts and squeals and splashes from the backyard. In tromped the Stein twins in their almost matching Hawaiian-print bathing suits, dripping pool water all over the pristine wood floors. They had identical red welts forming on their foreheads. Not that either of them seemed to care.
    “Yo! Where’s the chips and dips?” Trevor shouted.
    Todd stopped in his tracks. “Dude. Who died?” Then he saw me and his eyes lit up. “Ally Ryan!” He loped over and gave me a huge, wet bear hug, his soaked brown hair dripping all over my