The Last Good Girl Read Online Free PDF

Columbia, some coast, where I didn’t have my dad looking over my shoulder? In a word: money. It’s free for me to go to school here.
    And you know what? It’s okay. I’ve wanted to be a student here for so long, it just feels natural. And my dad won’t harass me much. He’s too busy politicking, being president.
    So it’s, like, here we go.
    I moved in today, finally have a dorm room of my own. I guess I can just hold up the phone and show you. Here, check it out. It’s a three-person suite. This is the study-slash-living room. See that big stone fireplace? It’s historic. They say Henry Ford used to whack off into it. Yikes, sorry. But that’s what they say.
    Anyway . . .
    Here’s our couch. Three desks. Through here is the bathroom. Tiny, right? I don’t know how three of us are gonna fit all our Sephora. Should be interesting.
    And here’s the bedroom. The top bunk is mine. Not my first choice.
    But before we get into that, I should check off the assignment. I’m supposed to tell you three words to describe myself. Okay, so, let’s see. I’m . . . smart, cheerful, and creative. My dad says I’m “spunky,” which I think makes me sound like an ’80s sitcom character. My mom, if she were still around, would say I’m a good girl. I think she meant that as a compliment.
    My greatest strength: my parents had mostly finished raising me before everything fell apart. My greatest weakness: how much I miss my mom.
    Sorry. Give me a sec.
    Where are the stupid tissues when you need them?
    Okay.
    Okay.
    Better.
    Let’s talk about normal stuff. The first day of school, the big moment, right? Today’s the day.
    I got here today before either of my roommates did—I just had a five-minute commute from Dad’s house. He drove me over, although his mind was somewhere else, distracted by the phone that’s permanently attached to his right hand. The dorm room was empty. I put my bags on the best bed, the single by the window. But Dad looked up from his call long enough to say that wouldn’t be fair to the other girls, that we should wait and talk about how to split things up. Then he went back to his very important call, phone pressed to one ear, finger pressed to the other. That finger to his ear really bugged me because I was, like, the only other person in the room.
    But, anyway, I didn’t take the single bed, because he was right. I should wait for the other girls to come and talk about it with them. I’d never met them before, though we’d e-mailed after we got assigned. I wanted to get off on the right foot. I set my bags down and started unpacking my toiletries into the bathroom.
    Whitney Branson came next, towed by both parents and two grandmothers. All the Branson women wore Tory Burch shoes. I wondered if they got a bulk discount. Whitney’s from Bloomfield Hills; she has long dark-blond hair and a full set of Louis Vuitton luggage. She walked right past me, over to the single by the window, set her suitcase down on it, and said, “I’ll take this bed.”
    I glared at my dad, but he’d put his phone away and was busy meeting Whitney’s parents, giving them the full charm offensive. I realized Whitney’s family must have money, lots of it. You know what they say: the most dangerous place on campus is anywhere between Barney Shapiro and a donor. He can sniff out trust funds like a French pig can sniff out truffles. Or, as the Wall Street Journal put it, he is “a world-class fund-raiser.”
    Here, look, you can see Whitney’s stuff. She’s been here four hours and already there’s like twenty thousand dollars’ worth of Nordstrom hanging in her closet. She’s got the perfect Calvin Klein comforter set; the perfect Urban Outfitters fluffy decorative pillows; the perfect Pottery Barn rug, which is actually cute but which she didn’t bother to ask