Drain You Read Online Free Page A

sugar crash hit, we were in each other’s arms taking best friend forever oaths, spitting into each other’s palms, braiding our hair together in alliance. We learned to skateboard whileholding hands, got into New Wave before anyone else, and went to the movies as each other’s dates. By junior year we weren’t quite as inseparable, just more realistic about the word “forever” and the significance of fluid exchange. Whereas other people followed Libby around, I just was around, and that made it easy for us to keep hanging out. Plus, neither of us was very good at making new friends. And we had history.
    So I loved Libby, but in a vintage way. Like a childhood blanket, or my dad’s mac and cheese. A deep love, but not one you tap into on a daily basis.
    Libby lived a “charmed life”—as my mother would put it—being the daughter of a not exactly aging rock drummer and his not exactly un-hot costume-designer wife. The Blocks were totally understanding when she dyed a Manic Panic hot pink streak into her perfectly layered hair and cut her entire sneaker collection into flip-flops, or shandals, as Libby called them: half shoe, half sandal. Her parents totally bought it because they were royally hip, and Libby was their unassuming princess.
    And no matter what she did to try to screw up her natural beauty—the aforementioned pink streak, ripped clothes from Barneys, occasional goth makeup—nothing ever worked. Libby was runway ready, tall and stick thin with a doe-eyed expression of world-weariness. She got more catcalls and “hey, babys” than even she cared for,leaving Libby with way too many male admirers but only one real female friend. So she hung out with her family mostly, making her seem entirely untouchable to everyone except her boyfriends. Regardless, she was still into me, and I wasn’t ungrateful for it.
    “Where is everybody?” Libby said, walking up and pirouetting a graceful 360 by the front register.
    “That’s what I said,” I said.
    “My mom’s in the car having a cow about something, I totally can’t hang.”
    Through the window I saw Stella Block calmly reading a Danielle Steel novel by the small car light. Libby was reading descriptions on the backs of movie boxes in no visible hurry.
    “I heard from someone that you hung with Naomi Sheets the other night.” Libby didn’t look up from the videos. Morgan shoved more Apple Jacks into his mouth. A customer I hadn’t noticed two aisles over loudly dropped a stack of video games.
    “How is that even possible? Isn’t there usually, like, a one-week delay period before the rumor mill kicks in?”
    “God,” Libby said. “Is it that big a secret?”
    I rolled my eyes.
    “Hey, I don’t even care. Just thought it sounded weird. No pressure to spill.”
    For the second time today I dodged the same bullet.
    “Whoever told you,” I said, pinching Morgan’s arm since Libby had gone back to reading, “was making a big deal out of nothing. Naomi was freaked about something, but it didn’t even matter because her brother was there to take her home.”
    “Her brother who?”
    “Just her brother.”
    “Sure,” she said, holding her gaze on me for a second. Then she remembered something. “I’m actually having this party tomorrow night to celebrate. You know, a summer solstice thing. The twins are coming, and Dewey and Cooper, and Nathan, and some girls too, I think.”
    Of course there wouldn’t be any girls but Libby. And me.
    “Stiles and Sanders are coming?” I asked.
    The Donnelley twins and their two best friends had graduated when we were sophomores, leaving behind a legacy of sexy sketchiness. None of them went to college—none of them went anywhere—preferring instead to continually lurk around the high school scene. The twins were both into Libby—which wasn’t surprising because they were always into the same things, they were basically the same person—but in order to keep the peace, Sanders had backed out of the