Watch for Me by Moonlight Read Online Free PDF

buried the animals he killed—where Mallory dreamed that a girl would lie next. It was also where the Brynns’ old family cabin camp was, where all the Brynn aunts and uncles and cousins gathered for two weeks every July. Up there, except for the evergreens, all the trees had the appearance of the block prints children make by dipping raw potatoes in paint—stark, still, branches against hills like a brown series of lower-case letter m’s. Looking down was depressing. Just in time for Christmas, the snow had melted into pools of gray slop.
    “I’m hopeless,” Meredith said suddenly.
    “I agree,” Mally teased her.
    “No, I mean I am without hope. I’ve flirted with Sam Lido and Carter Roskov until I’m limp and they just pat me on the head. All Sam can see is Allie, and Carter’s either gay or dating a college girl.”
    “I know it’s bizarre to you, Meredith, but there are straight guys on Earth who don’t immediately want to fall at your feet,” her twin said.
    “Since when?” Merry asked honestly. “We’re shopping for a formal for you. What’s that about? A year ago, you wouldn’t wear a dress, and nobody wanted you to!”
    “I don’t want to buy one, actually,” Mallory said. “But I don’t feel right borrowing one. It’s Drew’s last school dance except prom. And I’ll probably need one for next year.”
    “Aren’t you going to be true to him when he’s in college?”
    “Please,” Mallory laughed. “He’s going to be in Arizona! And Drew just wants me because of the convenience factor.”
    “You don’t believe that,” Merry said. “You really care.”
    “Yeah, I really do. I really do. But long-distance stuff, it never works out. I don’t want to get hurt,” Mallory said in a rare burst of vulnerability. “Plus, at his school, they probably have pretty, older girls there stacked up like firewood. There’re about twenty pretty girls in Ridgeline—and I’m not one of them.”
    In fact, neither Mallory or Meredith was pretty, but both had the kind of strong features—thick, shiny black hair, high cheekbones, and lips red as plush—that would one day make them beautiful women. If anyone had asked about the Brynn twins, people would describe their small, straight-backed bodies, always in motion, alike as little mustangs, their freckles and their rainwater gray eyes. Because all twins are “cute,” people called them that.
    “Come on. He’s loved you since you were ten. But I have to admit that it’s a weird thought to kiss somebody you used to eat sand with in the sand box,” Merry said to her sister. “I thought you were destined to marry the boy next door, like in the old movies.”
    “No, I’m definitely in the open options program next year,” Mally said. “So the dress will come in handy.”
    “You’re such a liar.”
    “Maybe I am. Maybe not. But I don’t want him to be the one who breaks up with me,” Mally said. “Let me think about now.”
    In the now, Mally was suffering about the dent that a dress would make in the money she’d hoarded for years, working Sundays with her dad. Merry was borrowing a dress from Neely Chaplin, her friend who, if not rich, was the closest thing Ridgeline had to rich. She lived in Haven Hills, a mushrooming development that was formerly a huge old farm and was now filled with gigantic new mansions and a golf course. The designer clothes Neely had came from real designers, although Neely’s mother CeCe got a break on them since she owned a boutique hat, handbag, and jewelry design business that had some pretty upscale clients. Neely and Merry were going with their cheerleading gang—all of them joined at the hip in boyfriend-less-ness (“And we’re the most popular sophomores!” Merry lamented. “How can this be real life?”). Despite this, borrowing instead of buying new was a sign of near-psychotic thrift for Merry, who could not keep twenty-four dollars in her pocket for more than twenty-four hours. But why