Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later Read Online Free PDF Page B

group seemed to settle down into a normal gathering, nibbling on guacamole and little sausage bites, drinking this and that and chatting among themselves. When the subject moved on to some boring thing about a planned pocket park downtown, Jessica began to relax.
    She took a sip of her Bellini and thought maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad. And it was nice being with old friends. But she didn’t count on Caroline.
    “So,” said Caroline, “any word yet?”
    Jessica looked at Caroline, a person she had known since kindergarten and never liked. Always matronly, even as a little girl, she was consistently taller than most of the other girls, and for a while, most of the boys. Plus, she was squarish. Even after puberty, when she had breasts and she wasn’t fat, she had no real waistline. No curves, just straight up and down, up to about five-ten. And she always looked hungry, leading with her nose, smelling out gossip fodder to chew on. And she usually found it. So people were a little afraid of Caroline, who was not always fair. Or as a lot of people said, never fair, certainly not if it interfered with a good story.
    “Oh, yeah, lots of words,” Jessica said.
    Incredibly enough, Todd, who was on the other side of the room, heard his beloved, heard her tone, and spun around and crossed the fifteen-foot room in about three steps.
    Meanwhile, Caroline’s face lit up like neon. Was she really going to hear it right from the villain’s mouth? Wow!
    Over the years there had been lots of scandals and gossip in Sweet Valley, but this one, the Todd and Jessica story, was far and away the winner. And it was going to be hers. Of course, all the other people listening would cut down on the embellishments. If only she could pull Jessica over into a corner. But, still, when word spread, she would be the go-to for inside information. Her head was spinning with anticipation.
    “Jess!” Todd called out, waving his hand. “I have to show you something.”
    Jessica didn’t even look at him. Her eyes were boring into Caroline’s eager face. She took a step closer and now she was but inches from Caroline. Close enough to bite her nose.
    “Yeah, lots of words.” Jessica looked around. “For everyone…”
    She slowly turned back to Caroline. “… but especially for you.”
    Todd wondered how Caroline could not see the bloody sledgehammer coming. But she seemed not to.
    “I’ve known you for over twenty years,” Jessica said in a very soft voice that belied the words, “and like most people in Sweet Valley, I don’t like you. You’re malicious and you never mean any good. Most people are too afraid of your vicious tongue to tell you, but I’m not. Not anymore.”
    Caroline just stood there, nailed to the spot. It was rare anyone ever attacked her, and she was too stunned to move.
    Then Jessica turned on Lila. “Why did you invite me when you knew this pig was going to be here? For entertainment? Thanks, best friend. Let’s go, Todd.”
    Todd, grateful that it was no worse, took Jessica’s arm, and together they walked out of the living room, down the hall, and out the front door. No one followed.
    Once out in the car, Jessica said, “What?”
    “You did good.”
    “Do you think any of them will still come to the wedding?”
    “Every one of them.”
    “Caroline, too?”
    “Are you kidding?”
    “Right.”
    Jessica looked at Todd, the anger gone. “Will it ever not be painful?”

3
    New York
     
    The theater was on Forty-fourth Street on the west side of Manhattan, in a converted loft building between Ninth and Tenth avenues. Elizabeth had Googled the theater and found out the building had been converted to a hat factory in the thirties and stayed that way until hats bombed out in the late sixties. For a time, it became a storage space. For the last five years it had been an Off-Broadway house that still felt like a storage space storing, instead of hats, rows of tacky, incongruous plush red velvet theater seats