Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner Read Free Book Online Page A

mother’s body with a blanket that I’d knitted, tel ing her to rest.
    “So then what happened?” I asked.
    “He was by the Dumpster. He was lying there, bleeding. His…his…” She touched one hand to her temple. “He wasn’t moving. I tried to get him to talk to me, but he was, like, passed out, and I was going to cal 911, but I knew they’d trace the cal and it would be in the papers, and I didn’t know what else to do, so I grabbed up al his clothes and put them in the car and I came here.” She looked up. “We have to go. You have to come with me. We have to go see if he’s…if he’s…”
    “Dead?” I supplied. She made a mewling noise and reached past me, grabbing for the vodka bottle.
    “Just so I’m clear here,” I asked, “you never tried to get back into the country club? You didn’t tel anyone?”
    Val dumped more vodka into her glass. “I was so freaked out! I had blood on my hands, there was blood on my coat, and you know how I am with blood.”
    “Which you’d think would be a deterrent against hitting people with your Jaguar,” I mused.
    My telephone—a new one, cordless and sleek—sat in the same spot on the counter where my parents’ old rotary phone had been. I picked it up and pointed it at her. “Cal the police.”
    “And say what?” she asked. “Hi, I think I just ran over this guy from high school, could you please go see if he’s dead?”
    “That sounds about right to me.”
    “We’l just go look!” she pleaded. “If he’s alive, we’l cal an ambulance and get him to a hospital! I promise!”
    “And if he’s not?”
    She drained her glass, wiped her cheeks, and raised her chin. “Then I wil cal the police and turn myself in.”
    Ha. Valerie Adler was not the cal -thepolice-and-turn-yourself-in type.
    Valerie
    Adler was the steal-a-car-and-drive-acrossthe-border-to-Mexico type. She was also the type to stash her former best friend as a hostage-slash-accomplice in the passenger seat.
    She was brave and clever, ruthless and fearless. It was why I’d loved her so much when we’d been girls.
    “We should cal an ambulance. We shouldn’t just be sitting here.”
    “Right,” she said, and grabbed my hand.
    “Go get dressed. Let’s go.”
    No, the rational part of my brain insisted, even as I walked upstairs to the bedroom that I stil thought of as my parents’ and pul ed on jeans and a sweater and heavy black clogs. You don’t have to do what she
    tel s you!
    I grabbed my purse, my keys, my wal et, watching my hands move as if they belonged to someone else, gathering my coat, my scarf, a hat I’d knitted. And then we were outside. The mist had turned into an icy drizzle, and Val’s diamond earrings flashed in the moonlight, and somewhere in the stream of time, the waters were shifting, and al of this had happened already, only I didn’t know it yet.
    She handed me her keys. “Can you drive?” she asked.
    “Better than you, evidently.”
    “Ha,” she said, and fol owed me to the Jaguar. She got into the passenger’s seat. I looked for signs of damage—a dent, a crumpled fender, a blood-washed headlight
    —but I couldn’t see a thing. God bless British engineering. I got behind the wheel, backed careful y down the driveway, and aimed the car toward the highway.
    aimed the car toward the highway.
    SEVEN
    The Adlers moved in during the last week of June, and by July, Valerie and I were insepar-able. Every morning, I’d wake up and wave to her through the living room window, and she’d grin at me and wave back from hers. At noon, when Jon and I came home from day camp at the rec center, Valerie would be sitting on our front step, in her cutoff shorts
    and
    too-big
    flip-flops.
    Sometimes
    she’d
    be
    reading
    an
    Encyclopedia Brown book, or bouncing a red rubber bal that she kept in her pocket, but most of the time she’d just be waiting there, calm and patient in the sticky heat. My mom would make us lunch, and if he was home, my dad would join