Tonya Hurley_Ghostgirl_02 Read Online Free PDF Page A

revenge. She hoped that word would get back to Damen. He’d lost the big game last year to Gorey in a squeaker, and even though Damen never gave it a second thought, Petula, in her infinite pettiness, imagined that dating Josh would really eat him alive.
    By the time she’d completed the parts of her beauty regimen she could manage on her own, she was already running behind schedule. She arrived a few minutes late to the day spa and was livid to find that despite the emergency appointment she’d made the night before, she still had to wait. She watched the seconds tumble away, drops of sweat popping through her cleansed pores and beading on her plucked brows.
    She still had to go to the tanning salon, get back home, eat a few carrot sticks, shower, set her hair, and steam her new bratank, not to mention pick up Scarlet from school since she had borrowed her car, all while texting the Wendys her every move. She was stressing big-time, although the “picking up Scarlet” item in her daybook was very low priority.
    She’d been waiting three whole minutes before she took her place on the pedicure throne and her nail tech began to scrub, scrape, pumice, massage, and clip. Ordinarily Petula would have required executive treatment and would never have bothered to speak to the help. But today she was growing more and more impatient and rushing the whole process.
    “What are you doing?” she snapped. “I don’t want my cuticles pushed back.”
    The nail tech looked up at her with a smile and resumed her work. Petula thought that she wasn’t getting it.
    “Don’t you talky American? Me No Likey!” she railed ignorantly while pushing back the cuticles on her fingers as a kind of sign language. The tech nodded again, blankly this time, and Petula exploded.
    “Chop, chop,” Petula bullied, again urging the tech to pick up the pace, her agitated feet splashing dirty water, flakes of dried skin, calluses, and toe jam all over the girl.
    When her need for speed was still unacknowledged, Petula went totally Rocky 1 on her.
    “Cut me!” she finally roared, pointing to her toenails.
    The girl was moving as quickly as possible, trying her best to meet all of Petula’s demands, but with her hands nervous and shaking, she accidentally nicked Petula’s big toe.
    Petula continued screaming at the girl and broadcasting her incompetence to the whole spa, so much so that people and clinicians were peeking their heads out of waxing rooms to see what all the commotion was about.
    “Here, let me put some alcohol on it,” the girl said apologetically in perfect English, which made Petula even madder.
    “I think you’ve done enough,” Petula barked. “This better NOT scar!”
    Petula grabbed her things, hobbled outside still wearing her paper flip-flops and foam toe separators, and jumped in the car.
    She was already pissed enough, but having to drive home in Scarlet’s dented and scratched jalopy, plastered with band and radio station bumper stickers and a hubcap-less spare tire, was almost unbearable. And the car was black, her least favorite color.
    Petula usually wore a scarf on her head, oversized glasses, and, on occasion, a wig to disguise herself whenever she had to drive it. More than anything, the car reminded Petula of Scarlet, providing plenty of reason for her to hate it.
    She pulled up to the school and rolled down the passenger window just as Scarlet emerged. Scarlet was mortified to hear the new Fergie CD blasting over her mint soundsystem and prepared for battle.
    “Get in, Little Miss Misery,” Petula ordered as she saw Scarlet emerge from school.
    The first thing Scarlet noticed was Petula’s paper flip-flops.
    “I see you’ve had a productive day,” Scarlet said sarcastically. “You can’t drive with those things on. They don’t constitute as shoes.”
    “Aw, does somebody have a case of ‘the sads’?” Petula asked, dripping with phony sympathy. “You are making me late for a very important