Wintergirls Read Online Free PDF Page B

our fingers on a thorn. We swore sacred oaths to be strong and to save the planet and to be friends forever.
    She taught me how to play solitaire. I taught her how to play hearts.
    In the spring of fifth grade, the boob fairy arrived with her wand and smacked Cassie wicked hard. She became the first girl in our class to really need a bra. The boys stared and snickered. The glittering girls, the ones with split tongues and pinchy fingers, whispered. I was secretly glad for my skinny chest and undershirts.
    The boys tried out their dirty words and crude com-ments on her for weeks. Cassie pretended she didn’t hear them, but I knew. Things boiled over in the lunch line on a Friday. Thatcher Greyson snapped the back of Cassie’s bra so hard everybody heard it. She whirled around, pushed him to the ground, jumped on him, and started pounding. By the time the aides pulled her off, he had a black eye and a bloody nose.

    Thatcher went to the nurse. Cassie was sent to Mr.
    Parrish’s office because he was the principal and her dad at the same time. He yelled at her so loud you could hear it in the hall, and then he sent her and Thatcher home for the day. The rest of us spent the afternoon writing essays about tolerance and kindness. This pissed off the glittering girls, who said it was all her fault.
    On Monday, the girls declared that Cassie was a dyke lesbo and threw her out of the tribe. I didn’t know what a dyke lesbo was, but it did not sound good. I chewed on the eraser end of my pencil and didn’t talk to Cassie all day. She sat alone at lunch on Tuesday. Played alone at recess. Instead of taking the bus, she drove home with her mom.
    On Wednesday the boys whispered a chant of “boobies, jugs, hooters, tits” whenever the teacher wasn’t paying attention. Thatcher drew a picture of Cassie with watermelon-sized breasts and passed it around the class.
    The glittering girls giggled and twirled their gum around their fingers.
    In the pecking order of fifth grade, I was closer to the top than the bottom because my parents were rich and my dad had met the president of the United States.
    In the complex math of elementary school, I was a whole number, not a fraction.
    Cassie and me had taken a sacred oath with poison berry juice and blood. There was no choice to make. I had to save her.

    At lunchtime, I sat next to Cassie at the loser end of the table. I gave her all my french fries and talked loudly about the two of us going to Boston for a museum trip with her mom. The other girls watched, tongues flicking over their braces, tasting their lip gloss and testing the wind.
    At recess, I walked up to Thatcher; me—a scrawny elf girl the size of a small second-grader standing up to a future varsity football player, offensive tackle.
    “I dare you to punch me,” I said.
    “You? Dare me?” He was laughing too hard to say anything else.
    I shoved him. “I double-dare you. If you don’t have the guts to do it, you’re a weenie.” I shoved again, harder. “If you do, you’re an even bigger weenie because it’s harder to take a punch than to give one.”
    I had no idea how those words snuck into my mouth.
    Everybody said, “Ooooooooohhhhhh,” and made a circle around us. Thatcher looked around for a teacher to save him. I closed my eyes and crossed my fingers.
    “Do it,” I said.
    He punched me so hard my lip split open and the loose molar I had been teasing with my tongue broke off. I spit the bloody tooth into his face just before I passed out.
    The glittering girls changed sides again. I had showed Thatcher. I had proved that girls rule. They made braided bracelets for me with embroidery thread and beads, but I wouldn’t take them unless they made some for Cassie, too. They invited Cassie back in the tribe, because really, Thatcher was a bully and the whole thing was his fault.
    After that, Cassie and me always told people we were twins.
    . . . body found in a motel room, alone . . .
    The body of Cassandra Jane