Elite Ambition by Jessica Burkhart Read Free Book Online Page B

please,” she said, laughing. “No one even knows me.”
    It was my turn to laugh. “Doesn’t matter. You walkedinto school like you owned the place and if you haven’t noticed—everyone wants to be your friend. The guys at the stable are totally into you, BTW.”
    â€œWhat? No!” Brit’s cheeks turned pink.
    â€œI was outside the tack room and I heard them talking about how hot the new girl was,” I said. “They think you’re supertalented. You’ll probably have a boyfriend by the end of the week.”
    Brit took a bite of pancake. “No thanks. I think I’ll wait till I’ve been here long enough to
not
get lost on campus before I have a boyfriend.”
    We smiled at each other and went back to our breakfasts. Earlier, I’d been upset that Paige hadn’t been able to make breakfast, but now I was glad I’d had the time to get to know Brit better.
    After we finished, Brit and I left the caf together.
    â€œSasha!”
    I looked away from Brit and saw Paige walking up another sidewalk toward us.
    â€œHey,” I said.
    Paige reached us, and Brit and I stopped.
    â€œPaige,” I said. “This is Brit. Brit, this is my roommate.”
    â€œHey,” Paige said, flashing a smile. “Nice to meet you.”
    â€œHi. It’s cool to finally meet Sasha’s roommate,” Brit said.She brushed her bangs out of her eyes and pointed to Paige’s boots. “Those are supercute. I love them.”
    â€œThanks,” Paige said.
    I looked at them and noted how they had a similar style of dress. Brit was in knee-high black boots and a green silk shirt. Silver hoops flashed in the sunlight and the outfit plus accessories was so something Paige would wear.
    â€œI’ve got to get to class, but see you!” Brit said.
    â€œBye,” Paige and I said.
    We split up from Brit and kept walking to English.
    â€œShe’s nice, right?” I asked.
    â€œDefinitely,” Paige said. “She seems cool.”
    We reached the English building and took the stairs to Mr. Davidson’s classroom. The advanced English class only had ten students, including Alison, and I loved how we got to sit in a circle and talk about whatever book we were reading. But Mr. Davidson was strict about participation—if you couldn’t answer questions about the past night’s reading, you had to leave class with a zero for the day.
    I took my usual seat next to Paige, and we pulled out our copies of
The Secret Garden
and the notebooks with notes we’d taken over break. Alison, pulling her hair over to one side as she walked, sat down beside me.
    â€œHey, guys,” she said. “Paige, how was your break?”
    Alison and Paige had bonded during Homecoming—they’d both been obsessed about it.
    â€œIt was fun,” Paige said. Blinking, I realized that Paige and I hadn’t talked much about her break.
    At. All.
    I didn’t even know what she’d done during the week off, except for running into her at Butter.
    â€œI got to hang out with my old friends, and we did some shopping,” Paige continued. “We were walking down Avenue of the Americas, and we passed a store that was having a sample sale that we didn’t even know about.”
    â€œOmigod! You totally went, right?” Alison asked.
    â€œOf course we did!” Paige said, grinning. “We got inside, and there were, like, a zillion people fighting over clothes and purses. I grabbed a Marc Jacobs dress that was supercheap and a Chloe handbag for a ridic price.”
    Alison clutched her hands together. “It is seriously my dream to go to one of those. I can’t wait to see your dress.”
    As I listened to Alison and Paige talk about the secrecy surrounding sample sales, my mind wandered to the schooling show. It’s not that I didn’t care about clothes—I loved shopping—but there were more important