Ten Girls to Watch Read Online Free PDF Page A

I’ve ever really done is write mean e-mails, but then not send them.”
    “You’re a killer, Dawn,” she said, and then after a long and what seemed appraising pause, “I think we should be friends. That way you can give me the dirt on Robert.”
    I smiled without saying anything, then looked away, almost embarrassed. Announcing friendship felt like too much, not just for us but for anyone. What was I supposed to do if I didn’t want to be friends? Say no? Then I’d seem confrontational when in fact she’d introduced the demands.
    Robert arrived just then. “I wondered where you two disappeared to!” he said in his jocular host voice. I watched his eyes flick between us while his mouth held a steady smile.
    He gave a flourishy little bow and offered his hand to Lily to pull her up. She took his hand and glided to his side. Before Robert could extend the same courtly hand to me, which would have been awkward, or leave me to get up from the pool deck by myself, which would have been even more awkward, Lily reached her own hand down to me. “Heave-ho, up we go!” she groaned as she pulled me up.
    There was nothing dainty about her grip, and when I was finally standing beside her, she smiled and nodded, like we’d just sealed the deal on our agreement to be friends. I glanced at Robert. He looked away.
    “Come on,” he said, “let’s get some dinner.” And again, it was diffuse, an invitation to Lily, to me, to the air.
    We got some of the chic pretzel pastrami sandwiches, put our feet in the pool again, and talked to Alec Baldwin. (In all my years at the party I’d never talked to him before. In real life he was nicer and had fatter fingers than expected.)
    After sunset, crickets now chirping all around us, guests began to leave. Still in our awkward but seemingly inescapable trio, Robert, Lily, and I were sitting near the koi pond when Regina and Tony walked by. I popped up, and Regina saw me, waved, and quickly walked over. Gosh, she was stylish, her red dress swishing around her legs like she was some jazz-era singer as she moved across the lawn.
    She gave me a quick air kiss on the cheek, then took a card from her purse and leaned in close. “Call me Monday, Kelly Burns.”
    She pulled away and walked off with Tony, turning back to wave over her shoulder. I looked at the card. In big pink letters it said: Regina Greene, Editor in Chief, Charm . For years, I’d been reading Charm magazine in doctors’ offices and hair salons, and even, occasionally, off the periodicals shelf at the library when I just couldn’t study for one more second. (I’d always hid in one of the carrels in the back when I executed that move, since reading about lip liner and layering when you were supposed to be reading critical interpretations of King Lear struck me as embarrassing.) Surely, I’d seen Regina’s photo inset on the editor page any number of times. I felt dopey for not recognizing her.
    “Looks like you sure charmed them, ha-ha, get it?” Lily said.
    “Or was it bedazzled them?” Robert said.
    “Wait, did Tony invent the bedazzler or something?” I asked, ready to be astounded if Tony or Regina were somehow affiliated with such a wardrobe revolutionizing tool.
    “Uh, no,” Robert said.
    “Then I don’t think I get your joke,” I said.
    “I guess there wasn’t really one. Just that bedazzled is a funny word?” He shrugged and flashed a supplicating smile.
    Lily splashed Robert with water from the pond, and I plopped back on the grass, turning my face away from them. The grass was soft and deep green—the loveliest fine fescue blend around. It hadn’t been so long ago that I’d imagined Robert and me getting married and having kids and our kids running around on this lawn. In fact, I could still imagine it. But as Lily moved, her silver kitten heel sandals flashed into my periphery, and I suddenly had a crystalline vision of their wedding, right here, in this same yard. In the rest of my view,