Lipstick & Zombies (Deadly Divas Book 1) by Faith McKay Read Free Book Online Page B

always redecorating. It was Carrie's second home; the first being the roof over her building.
    "This girl tried to take my Tuesday slot,” Sadie said. “And she shows up at every audition I go to. She never speaks to anyone, except to say something mean, in that chipper little voice. She doesn't care if a slot's already been filled. As I hear it, she'll do whatever it takes to get what she wants."
    Carrie knew better than to respond to this type of bitter attack, but that didn't make her silence easy.
    Gerri smiled at Sadie. "Hasn't anyone ever told you to hate the game, not the player?"
    "Excuse me?"
    "It seems to me we're a bunch of bitches willing to do whatever it took to get here," Gerri said. "I don't know about you dears, but they put my ass in a room with a zombie without telling me first, and then shut the damn door. And I was cool with it."
    "Totally," Dee said. "I ruined my shoes."
    "Me, too," Gerri said. "Blood splatter's a bitch."
    "That doesn't come out?" Dee asked. "Damn. They said it might. Blood got on my top, but I broke my heel."
"How'd you do that?"
    "I stuck it in the thing's forehead," Dee said with a wicked grin. "Piper D's."
    "Oh my god," Gerri said. "Piper D's are, like, my favorite shoe."
    "Mine, too," Dee said with a sigh.
    "So what about you?" Gerri asked, pointing just to Carrie.
    "Piper D's are great."
    "No, no. Why do you hate her?"
"I don't hate her," Carrie said. She didn't.
    "Then what's your problem?"
    "I don't have a problem."
Sadie huffed and rolled her eyes.
    "You have a problem," Gerri said, and laughed. "Just have your fight and get it over with. That passive aggressive shit is so boring."
"Definitely," Dee agreed.
    "What do you say, Jo?" Gerri asked. "Let's take our first vote, get the majority, and make these two duke it out as our first band vote action."
    Carrie's heart was racing. In all the worst case scenarios she'd let run through her mind the night before, this had never come up as a remote possibility. Maybe she should have spent more time prepping for today.
    "What kind of fighting?" Jo asked.
    Awful lot of help that girl was.
    "Oh, I think I'm going to like you, Jo Jo," Gerri said.
    "Jo," Jo said.
    "So, Carrie," Sadie said.
    Dee exclaimed, "Here we go!" and jumped off the sofa in her excitement.
    Sadie said, "Why don't you tell us all how you got in this band?"
    Carrie took a deep breath. "We all got in here the same way, just like Gerri said."
    "I saw that news report. That was about you, wasn't it? Where the first alternate got stabbed by the second alternate?"
    "I wouldn't know," Carrie said. "I wasn't an alternate."
    "So you say," Sadie said. “Maybe the first choice girl from your school died in round three, and you stabbed that other alternate to make it in.”
    “Seriously?” Gerri asked. “Did you do that?”
    “No!” Carrie couldn't believe this was happening. “I was not an alternate!”
    “But if you had been,” Gerri said, “you would have stabbed someone. I can see that about you.”
    Carrie's fingernails were dug so deep in her arms she couldn't believe she wasn't bleeding. She couldn't relax enough to straighten her fingers out. They thought she was an alternate? Her? Carrie? An alternate? Never .
    “Oh!” Dee held her phone out, but not steady enough for anyone to actually see. “Some girl named Melanie Frisker was the stabber.”
    “That still doesn't answer the original question,” Gerri said. “What is Carrie's problem?”
    “I don't have a problem,” she said, again.
    “Sure you don't, honey. You are a perfect picture right now of someone without a problem.”
    “She's always like this, I swear,” Sadie said.
    She knew these girls weren't going to like her, but to hate her, this soon? “You're just jealous,” Carrie said.
    “Jealous?” Sadie asked. “Of what?”
    “Of me,” Carrie said. “You can just see the talent, and it kills you, but that's your problem, not mine.”
    “Is this happening?” Sadie asked.
    “Well, look