Brutal Precious (Lovely Vicious #3) by Sara Wolf Read Free Book Online Page B

grinning wryly. "I guess. A little."
    "Do you remember the first time we met at Avery's party? And he made you cry?"
    "Oh god, I was such a crybaby. I can't even believe how dumb I was. And that was just, like, ten months ago. I could've had a baby in that time."
    "A crybaby," I insert.
    "All babies are crybabies," She counters. I take on a wise old man squint and voice as I postulate.
    "But are all crybabies...babies?"
    Kayla courteously punches me, then sighs and leans back in her seat.
    "Jack was the first one to bring it up. He made me start questioning everything - why I was hanging with Avery, did I really enjoy her company, how much of my feelings were hidden behind the shopping and the gossip. Without him, it would've taken me a lot longer."
    "Wouldn't have killed him to put some damn sugar on it," I grunt. "Willy Wonka does it all the time, and he's fine! Crazy and possibly homicidal, but fine."
    Kayla laughs and shakes her head. "You know Jack. He doesn't work like that."
    I smile, the thing a little twisted but still whole. Kayla puts her hand on my shoulder.
    "You two are...the same. I didn't notice it before, but Wren pointed it out to me. He's right. You two really are the same. So I think...I think even if he's gone now, he'll be back. People like you - you don't find very often. He'll be back."
    "And when he comes back, I will behead him." I announce.
    "You'll greet him," Kayla says sternly. "With a hug."
    "I will greet him with a hug. To his torso. Which will be missing a head."
    Kayla slaps her palm to her face, and I hug her, laughing. Laughing warm. Laughing true. Laughing for the first time in what feels like forever.
    I'm not really losing my best friend.
    We're just going our own ways. We're scattering ourselves to different winds, but we'll come together again. We are exploring a globe in different directions. Like Columbus and Magellan, boldly going where no stinky sixteenth-century European explorer and his crew of scurvy men has ever gone before! Except one of them died of fever, and, like, mutiny, I think, and the other was pretty much a racist bastard who enabled hundreds of years of genocide, so in a fit of good judgment I decide to nix that metaphor entirely.
    "Thank god," Kayla breathes. "Can you get out now?”

 
     
-5-
    3 Years
    45 Weeks
    0 Days
     
    I've come to the very original and unique conclusion that leaving home sucks ass. No one else has ever, in the history of humanity, come to this conclusion. No one except me. I am special.
    "Isis, we're late!"
    And late. I am very late.
    Being late doesn't deter me from being proper about farewells, though. As Mom starts the car, I stand in the doorway and breathe in the musty air of eighteen years worth of angst. I didn't spend all eighteen years here, but all the shit that happened in the last year and a half made it feel like that long.
    Goodbye, little room.
    Goodbye, girl I used to be.
    I hug Ms. Muffin close, and leave.
    Mom drives slow and carefully. I sip ginger ale and watch the highway flash by. Suddenly, a terrifying thought hits me upside the head with its sweaty palm.
    What the hell did I do with my teenage years?
    I didn't volunteer, or do sports. I didn't become a radical warrior princess on my sixteenth birthday, complete with a talking cat and magically-appearing clothes. Hogwarts didn't even send me a letter and I haven't actually forgiven them for that. Wait until I go to London and find Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters and slip through to the other side and unleash my rage. I'll make Voldemort look like a sock puppet. And I'll make-out with Draco. And I'll train a bunch of house-elves to fan me and bring me grapes -
    I stop when I realize I'm writing mental Harry Potty fanfiction on my way to college. Focus! I need at least seven whole focuses if I'm going to make a fabulous impression. Or any impression at all. I'd rather make a bad impression than no impression.
    As Mom pulls onto the exit, I sigh.
    I didn't even kiss a