The Cinderella Society Read Online Free PDF Page A

Cassandra?”
    Sarah Jane glanced up at me in the rearview mirror. “Have you met Cass?”
    “No.”
    “Then how would she know to invite you?”
    How could my distress be completely lost on both of them? “I don’t want to crash the plans,” I said, hoping for casual but delivering more on the side of lame and self-conscious.
    “It’s no big, Jess,” Kyra said. “It’s kind of a tradition, not a formal party or anything.”
    “More like a standing invitation,” Sarah Jane added. “I’m not even sure who-all’s gonna be there. We never know until we get there.”
    That’s how it is with the in crowd. If they hear about a party, they just assume they can hang. Not so for the rest of the world. Most of us have to be outright invited or we run the risk of ridicule and banishment.
    When Sarah Jane turned off the engine in front of my house and they started unbuckling their seat belts, I panicked.
    “Be right back,” I said, bolting out of the car. I didn’t have a packing plan yet, didn’t want them to see my room in hurricane mode, and definitely didn’t want them to meet Mom in her current hormonal state. My life was ridiculous enough all on its own.
    I nearly ran over Mom when I blew through the door. “Got invited to a sleepover,” I called, taking the stairs two at a time. “I’m just grabbing my stuff.”
    I yanked my cheer duffel off the back of my closet door, tossed my ruined tee and bra in the trash, then remembered the pin and snagged it. I threw on my pink CHEER CHICK tank and surveyed the heap of clothing on my bed. In the time it took Mom to waddle up the stairs to grill me, I’d alreadythrown in shorts, yoga pants, and a couple of tees, and was pulling out whatever I had clean in my underwear drawer.
    “Were you planning to ask?” Mom eased herself down onto my bed, huffing after hauling forty extra pounds of baby stomach up the stairs. “Whose house are you going to?” she asked between gasps for air. “Will her parents be home?”
    “Sorry. Can I go? It’s one of the girls who used to cheer here,” I said, not liking the direction this was going. “Two of the other cheerleaders invited me to a sleepover they always have at her house.”
    I ran across the hall and stuffed my skin-care and makeup bin—what Dad calls my tackle box—into the bag and hoped I could make her see reason. For a woman who’d pretty much let me fend for myself since I was twelve, she’d turned into Super Mom of the Billion Questions since we’d moved to Georgia. Quitting her job as a big-shot auditor to stay home with the twins once they were born left her with a void she filled by grilling people for a living. Lucky me.
    Mom sat perched on the edge of my bed, breathing hard and contemplating my story. Finally, she came to her senses. “It’s a cheerleading sleepover?”
    “I’m not sure who-all will be there, but Sarah Jane said some of them will. She’s our cocaptain,” I added for good measure. Captains were responsible, right? That had to help my case.
    Mom nodded, somehow comforted by the idea of me spending the night with complete strangers whose parents may or may not be home as long as it was sports-related. Whatever.
    “We need to get started on the nursery mural,” she reminded me. “You’ll be home in time to help in the morning?”
    I stiffened a little. She’d never considered quitting her jobfor me, but for the twins? It was a whole new ball game. If the Parker household was the solar system, the twins were about to become our sun.
    “Promise,” I said. “I’ll have my cell if you need me.” I gave her a quick hug—extra gentle around the middle—and darted for the stairs before she could change her mind.
    *   *   *
    Until a few years ago, Mt. Sterling was your average small town, tucked away between Atlanta’s outer suburbs and the North Georgia Mountains. A quiet, friendly place filled with nice people like my grandma (that’s Nan) and stores like her funky