Toxic (Better Than You) Read Online Free PDF Page B

bothers us even though I can feel them watching.
                  “I need an award,” I tell her.
                  Sam throws her head back and laughs, her dirty blonde curls bouncing against her back. I’ve always been jealous of her hair and her golden skin, but mostly of her big blue eyes. The guys go crazy over her eyes.
                  I grab her face and hold her still. “I want your eyeballs, Sam.”
                  She smiles at me, big and beautiful like always. “I want your hair, Lo.”
                  “No you don’t, you big fat liar.”
                  She lifts her eyebrows and nods her head. “It’s true! I want your hair and your eyes and your lips and your skin-”
                  “Let’s switch! We can totally switch!”
                  And then we’re both laughing, mostly because we’re drunk. But it’s not enough.
                  “More!” I yell.
                  “Agreed!”
                  We hold hands and work our way back through the crowd, back to the kitchen, back to the alcohol. Sam’s poison is tequila but mine is vodka. I can see the irony there but I decided a long time ago to stop trying to change my hand. Life’s gotten so much easier since then.
                  Sam lines up two shots for each of us. I grab the glass and clink it with hers before tapping it to the counter, and then throw it back. Another one bites the dust. Before the first one has even settled, the second one is down and we’re both leaning over the counter, breathing through the burn.
                  ”Man, that shit’s toxic,” Sam mutters to herself.
                  We’re toxic, but only the best things are.
                  I need more. I like the way it burns, I like the way it’s toxic just like me. Fuck the glass .
                  It’s harder to drink it straight out of the bottle, but I don’t come up for a breath for a good three seconds and only when I slam the bottle on the counter do I realize that everyone is watching. As soon as I meet their eyes, breathing hard and trying even harder to keep it all down, they raise their hands in a victory cry because we all know how disgusting cheap vodka is.
                  “Dance!” I scream towards Sam, and she grabs my hand without question and squeezes us back onto the makeshift dance floor.
                  When Sam and I first met, she was this shy, doe-eyed little girl who I later found out came from a world similar to mine. We were kindred spirits, Sam and I, with our drug addicted, negligent parents, the only difference being that it’s her dad and she has a brother. Sometimes we joke about introducing our parents to each other because obviously they would have a lot in common, but we both know it’s a bad idea. There’d be enough toxicity in that fucked up family to kill us all.
                  Eventually Sam became comfortable around us and at her new school, and it wasn’t hard to see that she was beautiful. So instead of noticing that her clothes were ragged and hand-me-downs, the boys only noticed that they were half gone. The teachers looked the other way because she was a good student and what’s the point of pushing the issue further? When I finally came around to embracing the life I was given, I joined Sam in her half-naked endeavors. And as it turns out, it works out pretty well.
                  Except when I’m dancing. And drunk. Because then the tiny, dark blue dress slides up way too high and god knows I’m not a whore. Not yet anyways.
                  “I have to pee!” I tell Sam. She just nods her head so I wobble through the crowd on my own, not even stopping to think about our buddy system promise.
                  It seems like way too long before I