Lunatic Fringe by Allison Moon Read Free Book Online

perfection,” she said with an arched brow and a
chuckle.
    Lexie noted the small irony: Blythe,
with her impeccable face, deriding the beautiful and the pure.
Lexie felt aglow by sheer reflection. Everything about Blythe cast
its own opalescent aura, purity reflected with the grace of
sculpted steel.
    “ So,” Blythe continued.
“How do you like the Pack?”
    Lexie struggled for the right
adjective. Terrifying, she wanted to say. Invigorating. Petrifying.
Inspiring. And on and on in a steady stream of unease. The simplest
truth was that she liked them, so she said so.
    “ You were getting along
well with Renee,” Blythe pressed.
    “ Yeah. I’ve never met
anyone like her before.” Lexie gauged her pitch and pace, pleased
to find herself holding it together.
    “ How so?”
    Lexie choked on a response. Would it be
racist to say she’d never met someone who looked like Renee before?
To say she liked her hair? Her freckles? The simple question caused
her brain to crash.
    “ She’s so . . . beautiful,”
Lexie stammered. This was also true, though not the complete truth.
Separating her beauty from everything else about her undermined the
veracity of the statement, and she cringed as she said it. Yet,
within those words was an admission of allure, of aesthetic
intrigue that could be considered, what? Attraction?
    Blythe’s blue eyes brightened. “She
thinks you’re pretty, too.”
    Lexie couldn’t seem to make her voice
work. It wasn’t just that someone considered her pretty, but that
someone like the unflappable Renee had mentioned such a thing to
Blythe. It was a pleasant feeling, though it did nothing to assuage
her anxiety about the kinds of feelings Renee had ignited in
her.
    “ Stick with the anatomy
class you mentioned. Renee T.A.s for a bunch of the labs. Smart as
hell. If you’re headed down the Bio track, she may be able to offer
you some academic guidance, if you’re in the market.”
    Lexie screwed up her mouth. “I don’t
know what track I’m on. It’s hard enough for me to navigate the
day-to-day here. Any thoughts about the future just give me a
headache. I’m not ready to label myself yet.”
    Blythe eyed her. “Oh, we don’t do
labels here. But if not academic, Renee could give you some
extracurricular ‘guidance’ that you’d really enjoy. Unless,” Blythe
raised an eyebrow, “you’ve got yourself a girlfriend.”
    “ Why does everybody keep
asking me that?”
    “ It’s an honest question. A
couple of the girls want to know if you’re available. I’d like to know. That’s
all.”
    “ But why not ask if I have
a boyfriend? Why is everyone assuming I’m gay or
whatever?”
    Blythe’s spine straightened and she
adjusted her glasses. “I don’t think anyone’s assuming anything,
Lexie. Except maybe you.”
    “ Me?”
    “ Labels are just part of
the patriarchal code of binary bullshit. They’re a way of
categorizing things so people can know exactly who to hate, who to
war with, and who to eliminate. Labels mean nothing to
self-actualized womyn.”
    Lexie rested her head on her knees.
Before coming to Milton, Lexie had never heard most of the
five-dollar words that Blythe dropped like bread crumbs for
pigeons. Perhaps this was a language she could speak, too, if she
only listened hard enough. But the listening made her more
frustrated. What mysteries of the world did the women of the Pack
grow up understanding that had eluded Lexie? She wondered if those
slumber parties would have been worthwhile, after all, if only she
had ever been invited. Now, she sat at the table of the erudite,
wishing that she had the wherewithal to know what questions to ask.
Lexie’s stomach lurched with anxiety, or perhaps it was the
remnants of the Bloody Mary. Either way, she felt a sudden pressure
to absorb all she heard to make up for lost time.
    Lexie took a breath. “What do you
mean?” she asked.
    “ If you have a binary,”
Blythe said, “you have opposition. Place values on those