Thirteen by Lauren Myracle Read Free Book Online

wood. But when they did, I knew I’d be sad.
    â€œHere you go,” I said to Cinnamon, handing her a beignet. “And here you go,” I said to Dinah, who looked froglike with her legs scrunched high.
    â€œYou are a goddess,” Cinnamon said.
    â€œAren’t I?” I pulled out my own beignet and placed it on my leg. The milk was trickier. I opened the cardboard carton, considered my options, then wedged it between my feet, which were propped on a metal crossbar.
    â€œSo,” I said, after taking my first scrumptious bite of beignet. Powdered sugar snowed onto my shirt. “Spill.”
    â€œWell,” Cinnamon said. “The first thing you need to know is that the party was unchaperoned, just as I suspected.”
    â€œNo way,” Dinah said.
    â€œWay,” Cinnamon said. “Steffie said Brad’s parents were at some charity event where they had to dress all wacky.”
    â€œ Wacky ,” I echoed, saying it in an appropriately wacky way. Wacky was one of those words that couldn’t be denied.
    â€œThe event was at a hotel, and they stayed overnight, which meant Brad had the whole house to himself,” Cinnamon said.
    Dinah did a shivery kind of thing, but not because it was cold. Her shiver had more to do with the unnerving and too-old concept of having a party your parents didn’t know about. That was my interpretation.
    â€œDid he have beer?” I asked. I felt tough for tossing out “beer” so nonchalantly, but also, more privately, like a poser.
    I’d certainly never drunk beer, nor would I if somebody offered me one. Beer was nasty.
    â€œHe had beer and wine coolers and a bottle of gin from his parents’ liquor cabinet,” Cinnamon said. “But I don’t think anyone drank the gin. According to Steffie.”
    â€œThat is so stupid,” Dinah said. She eased the milk from my feet and took a swig. She carefully wedged the carton back. “Don’t they know how busted they could get for that? Plus it’s bad for their livers.”
    â€œI highly doubt they drank enough to damage their livers,” Cinnamon said. “Anyway, not everybody drank.” She turned to me. “But Malena did, and Gail Grayson.”
    Gail Grayson was my nemesis from elementary school. She was the full-of-herself purple-bra-wearing new girl who came in and stole away my ex-BFF Amanda. And Malena…well, she was even worse than Gail. Malena was a longtime Westminsterite like Cinnamon, which meant I had the joy of meeting her at the beginning of the school year, when Dinah and I transferred over.
    Malena had boobs, and she wasn’t afraid to use them. She applied lipstick right there in class, in front of everyone. She wore sheer blouses over camisoles, which just barely met the dress code. She wore glittery hair clips from San Francisco that had swaying, jeweled bits dangling down. You couldn’t even find hair clips like that in Atlanta.
    â€œDid Amanda have anything to drink?” I asked. “Was she there?”
    â€œUm…do you really want to know?”
    â€œI don’t know. Do I?”
    â€œShe was there, and she did drink, according to Steffie,” Cinnamon said. “A peach wine cooler.”
    Dinah met my eyes. Unlike Cinnamon, she’d known the pre-junior-high Amanda. Sweet, smart Amanda with the heart-shaped freckles. Amanda who liked Cheetos. Amanda who used to make fun of people for being all snobby and superior and popular.
    â€œDid she…get drunk?” I asked.
    â€œOff one wine cooler? I don’t think so,” Cinnamon said. She was wiser than us in the way of alcohol because her brother, Carl, was a sophomore at the University of North Carolina. “She might not have even drunk it. Who knows? Maybe she just held it to look cool.”
    â€œSo stupid,” Dinah said.
    I shifted my weight on the jungle gym, handing the milk to Cinnamon so I could let my legs dangle.