Doreen Read Online Free

Doreen
Book: Doreen Read Online Free
Author: Ilana Manaster
Pages:
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impressed. You are a great photographer, Biz.”
    â€œI’m, you know, well, that’s nice of you to say.”
    â€œI didn’t say it to be nice.” Doreen squeezed her cousin’s arm.
    Heidi reentered the common room under an armload of clothes and deposited them with a grunt onto the sofa. “Everybody has a profile.”
    â€œNot everyone,” said Biz. “I, for example, do not have a profile and I can assure you that I don’t believe myself to be at all lacking—”
    â€œRight. Let me rephrase,” said Heidi. “Anyone who has any social aspirations whatsoever at Chandler has a GryphPage profile. Come over here, will you, sweetie? Let’s see what we can do.”
    Doreen left Biz’s photo collage and stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, her body resigned to Heidi’s machinations. Heidi chose a black wrap dress from the pile and held it up over Doreen, studying the effect with a frown on her face. It was one of a few Mumzy purchased at Liberty of London in a panic, after Biz had arrived for a ten-day trip carrying only a backpack. “Too dull,” Heidi pronounced and snatched the dress from Doreen, replacing it with a yellow silk.
    â€œThis is nice,” Doreen offered. “I like the color.”
    â€œNo, no,” said Heidi. “It’s entirely too, I don’t know, Nantucket bridesmaid.” She flung the yellow on top of the black wrap on the reject pile and stood with her hands on her hips, her perfect forehead creased in concentration. Biz sat at her desk chair and opened her laptop. Clothing bored her.
    â€œIsn’t there anything with a little sex?” Heidi complained as she picked through the pile on the sofa.
    â€œListen,” said Biz. She entered Doreen’s name on the GryphPage home screen and gave her account a password, cousin1. “If you don’t like the pickings, why don’t you go into your own closet?”
    â€œAha!” said Heidi. “Of course, the Dolce.” She produced a tiny scrap of shiny, baby-blue fabric from the pile and held it overhead like a captured flag. “I wore this to winter formal last year. Doreen, the boys were driven near to lunacy!”
    â€œBut—” Doreen protested as Heidi pressed the frock into her arms. “Isn’t it a little, I don’t know, small?”
    â€œTry it on, won’t you, dear? We’ll be honest. Let’s just see what we’re dealing with, hmm?” Heidi ushered Doreen into the bedroom.
    â€œI don’t know . . .” Doreen studied the minidress like she did not know what she was meant to do with it.
    â€œIt’s the kind of dress that looks better on. Trust me. You pull it on over your head.” Heidi closed the bedroom door.
    Meanwhile, Biz had filled in Doreen’s GryphPage profile with information about her cousin that she remembered from their shared youth at the beach house. Under “Interests” she’d written, “Gardening, mosaic-making, sailing, and board games.” Now she was straining to remember something about Doreen’s musical tastes. Biz smiled to herself as she recalled playing the pieces she knew on the heirloom baby grand the family kept in the great room while Doreen hopped and twirled and flittered around like a fairy. Whenever the music stopped, Doreen would spiritedly demand more. “Mozart,” Biz wrote in the music column. “Bach, Chopin, Beethoven.”
    â€œWhat do you think you’re doing?” Heidi asked. She bent over Biz and read what she’d typed over her shoulder.
    â€œHuh? I’m helping.”
    â€œBoard games? Do you really think that is an appropriate interest for a high school junior? And classical music? She wants to be popular, Biz, not middle-aged.”
    â€œYou like classical music.”
    â€œOf course I do, but I’m not going to advertise it on the Internet. Here, move.”
    â€œThis is
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