Thirteen Plus One Read Online Free PDF

way. Dinah was allowed to have friends other than me and Cinnamon. She was even allowed to have intense conversations with other people. But we hardly knew Mary, and anyway, Mary was ... strange. Sometimes she was overly fawning, complimenting girls’ outfits or teeth or skinniness with an enthusiasm that seemed fake. Other times, she just seemed blank. Checked out.
    “Dinah?” I called.
    Dinah’s eyes widened with relief, or so it seemed to me. Mary looked displeased.
    “Don’t tell,” I heard Mary whisper as Cinnamon and I approached. Then she focused on me and Cinnamon and plugged in her smile.
    “Winnie! Cute shirt,” she said. “And Cinnamon. Love your nails.”
    Cinnamon glanced at her nails, which she’d painted with her highlighter. They were neon orange.
    “Thanks,” she said.
    Mary laughed—fakily—and took off, though not before giving Dinah a meaningful glance.
    When she was out of earshot, I said, “Don’t tell what?”
    “Nothing,” Dinah said, closing her locker. “She ... um ...” She shrugged. “Nothing.”
    “Dinah,” I said.
    “Should we get out of here?” she said. “Want to walk to 7-Eleven and get Slurpees?”
    Cinnamon made a chhh sound with half her mouth. “Not 7-Eleven. Too likely to see Bryce there.”
    And Lars, I thought, feeling grumpy. The problem with having Cinnamon date Lars’s best friend, and then get dumped by Lars’s best friend, was that I was now in the position of having to choose between my BFF and my boyfriend, since where Lars was, Bryce so often was.
    Wait a sec, I thought. Dinah brought up Slurpees instead of answering my Mary question as a distraction technique—and she almost got away with it.
    “Dinah?” I said. “When someone says ‘don’t tell,’ that means you do tell. Maybe not the whole world, but at least your best friends.”
    “True dat,” Cinnamon said.
    “What does Mary not want you to tell? ” I pressed. “Why was she even talking to you?”
    Dinah looked wounded. “Gee, thanks.”
    “Oh, you know what I mean. Do you guys even have any classes together?”
    “She’s in the hip-hop club with me,” Dinah said. “Could we not talk about it? Seriously, it is so nothing.”
    Except it obviously was, or she’d tell us.
    “Fine,” I said. Deliberately, I fished my iPhone out of my backpack and tapped the Notes application. I pulled up a fresh piece of pretend-paper and typed, FIND OUT WHAT’S UP WITH MARY WOODS!!!
    I turned my phone so Dinah could see. She rolled her eyes.
    “We could go to the mall,” Cinnamon said. “I could get my lip pierced.”
    “No,” I said. Westminster didn’t allow facial piercings, and anyway, please.
    “We could go to a tattoo parlor.”
    “And that would be another no.” I exhaled, like a bull. “You guys are being annoying. Both of you.”
    My phone buzzed, and I glanced down and saw that I’d received a text from Sandra. It said, “bored!!!! need smoothie!!!! wanna come?”
    “why yes,” I typed back, dropping a mask over my delight so that Dinah and Cinnamon wouldn’t ask to tag along.
    I dropped my phone into my backpack and said, “Sorry, kids. Sandra needs me.”
    “So I’m getting a tattoo by myself?” Cinnamon asked. “That means no heart with Winnie in it, you know.”
    “I’ll try to get over it,” I said.
     
    At Smoothie King, I vented about Cinnamon and Dinah. Sandra’s typical MO when I complained about things was to imply that my problems were stupid and tell me to go away. But today, remarkably, she listened.
    “Here’s the thing,” Sandra said, keeping her straw in her mouth as she talked. “Remember when you and Amanda quit being friends?”
    My cheeks got hot. It was an old wound—the fact of Amanda ditching me to be more popular—and I doubted it would ever fully heal. “She dropped me for Gail Grayson in sixth grade.”
    “And do you remember what I told you?”
    “That sometimes friends outgrow each other,” I recited. I shuddered, because