Giving Up the Ghost by Phoebe Rivers Read Free Book Online Page A

an umbrella semi-pointless.
    I was just wondering if today would be the day I’d get my very first tardy slip, when Lily finally burst out of her front door and splashed down the path toward me.
    â€œSorrrrrrreeeeee!” she trilled, struggling to open her umbrella as she ran. “Yucky weather! I could not decide which rain boots to wear!”
    The idea that anyone might have more than one pair of rain boots to choose from kind of amazed me. But that was Lily. And sure enough, her pink polka-dotted rain boots looked way better than my boring brown ones. She managed to look great, even in the pouring rain.
    I took a flying leap over a puddle, my heavy backpack bouncing on my back. “Yep. But luckily, it’s supposed to clear up by tomorrow.” Maybe now was a good time to bring it up. “Hey, speaking of tomorrow, do you, um, feel like hanging out? It doesn’t have to be an actual birthday thing or anything like that, but—”
    â€œYou cannot believe the drama in my house this morning,” said Lily, who seemed not to have heard me. “My brother lost his baseball glove—or at least he thought he did, until he realized he left it out on the lawn overnight and it got rained on, which evidently is the end of the world , judging by the way he flipped out this morning.”
    I waited for her to take a breath and tried again.
    â€œSo, tomorrow? I was thinking—”
    â€œAnd then Cammie decided to try to flush several Super Balls down the toilet. Apparently, she saw someone do this in a cartoon. But they kept bobbing back up, and it wasn’t until the third try that . . .”
    I tuned out what she was saying. Without really meaning to, I focused in on her thoughts. Was she intentionally trying to change the subject? Her words tumbled out in a steady stream, like coins from a slot machine, making it hard to read her thoughts. I’d never realized it, but when a person is speaking, her thought stream kind of pauses—almost like you can’t talk and think at the same time. Anyway, it wasn’t easy to hear her thoughts. They came to me in brief snippets during the infrequent pauses in her conversation. But I heard enough.
    Tomorrow? Not tomorrow! . . . shopping date with Miranda! Jayden ’ s present! . . . think, think, think . . . need a reason . . . my recital! Aha! Good. Have to practice for my recital . . .
    I put up the shield. Managed to tune her out completely now—both what she was saying and what she was thinking. I was stunned. Lily and Miranda were going shopping together? And they were going to chip in to buy Jayden a present? Together? Wasn’t he my sort-of-kind-of boyfriend? Why were they buying him something? Wasn’t it enough that they were throwing him a party? Without asking me for any help?
    I tuned back in to her words.
    â€œâ€”so yeah, then my mom was on the phone with the plumber, and it was one of those ‘eventful’ mornings.” She crooked her fingers into air quotes.
    She was obviously trying to change the subject. To keep it away from doing something together tomorrow. I didn’t know how to feel. Confused? Hurt? Mad? Having a best friend might be all new to me, but I was certain this wasn’t normal behavior. Why was Lily treating me like this?
    I was pretty quiet for the rest of the walk to school. I swallowed away the huge lump in the back of my throat. My eyes burned, but I didn’t cry. Between my hood and my soggy hair, my face was covered, so Lily didn’t notice.
    I spent the first half of the day going over my conversation with Lily in my mind. Could I have misread something? Or had I done something wrong without realizing it?
    At lunch I was still upset. Lily and Miranda were chatting away as I slid into my seat with my tray. I stared down at my taco. I wasn’t all that hungry anyway, and what was left of my appetite rapidly