The Lifeboat Clique Read Online Free PDF Page A

asked.
    Sienna was there to helpfully translate word-spray into bitch-stick. “What would make you come to a party where you aren’t invited?”
    I didn’t like the way this was going. “I was actually paid to do a strip show here. Where’s my pole?”
    Hayley nodded as if that made sense. Sienna just stared at me and blew some secondhand vapor my way.
    â€œWhy would you want to hang around with us? Don’t you have any friends?” Sienna asked.
    â€œI have a ton of friends, especially if you count friendly carbs and friendly bacteria.”
    Sienna kept up the blank-bitch stare while Hayley cocked her head slightly.
    I moved over to the refrigerator, grabbed a beer, and tried to open it, but it wasn’t a twist top. So I just stood there trying to pry off the cap with my thumb. They were still looking at me like I needed to further explain myself, or beg for their mercy, or ask for a razor blade so I couldstart cutting myself, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I thought it was somewhat funny, in a sad way, that I actually was at a party and actually talking to people but that the subject of our conversation was how crazy I was to think I belonged there. Sonny Boy would have said in his high voice: “Well, now you’ve done it, dipshit.”
    I felt a presence in the room and looked over. There was dear Abigail, head intruder herself, wearing jeans, a T-shirt under a rumpled sweater, and a pair of cowboy boots, because her reinvention of herself had never quite reached her clothes. Her hair was sprayed down hard, the camouflage was chalky over her freckles, and she had evidently been plucking her eyebrows and penciling them in too heavy, giving her a slightly deranged look.
    She looked me up and down. “Well, well, well,” she said in her fake Texas accent. It came out sounding like Way-ull, Way-ull, Way-ull . “Have we got a trespasser here?”
    A knot of anxiety was growing inside me. The last thing I wanted was a confrontation with my former best friend.
    â€œAll of us are trespassers,” I said.
    â€œOooh,” said Abigail. “Good one. Knee slapper.”
    I was starting to feel like it was a very, very bad idea to come to this party.
    â€œWhere’s your video camera?” Abigail asked. Somepeople have inside jokes. We had an inside worst-memory-in-the-world.
    â€œDecided not to bring it,” I said.
    â€œYou know what happened last time!” Hayley piped up.
    Abigail gave her a withering look, and she made a squeaking sound and took a gulp of her beer.
    â€œIs she allowed to be here?” Sienna asked. “Shouldn’t you throw her out?”
    And that’s what made Sienna such a bitch. She wasn’t content to be unfriendly. She just had to take it to the next level. And what was it to Sienna that I was there? No one was supposed to be there.
    I almost said that Croix had invited me. Then I decided I wasn’t going to give them the pleasure. Ironically enough, this would be the second time Abigail threw me out of a party. And if I was made to leave before I got to see Croix, if this dream died right here, then I was going to pull Sienna’s ponytail really hard before I left. Give it a kamikaze yank and watch her eyes bulge out. I could almost feel her salon-slickened ponytail grasped in my palm like a pelted salamander.
    Do it, I thought, now glaring at Abigail. Go ahead, Texas witch.
    Abigail shrugged. “Whatever,” she said. “I just thinkit’s kinda sad that you want to come to a party where no one wants you around.”
    I wanted to respond, “I think it’s kind of sad you think that fake Texas accent is cool,” but I said nothing. Tried to feel nothing, but that was impossible.
    And that was it. Sienna and Hayley shrugged too because they were obedient robots. They lost interest in me and went back to talking. Abigail turned her back to me, and there I was. At