Girls in Love Read Online Free

allowed to sit where we wanted. We had to be in alphabetical order. I found myself sitting next to Magda.
    I was a bit scared of Magda at first. Even when she was only eleven she had a proper figure and she arranged her hair in a very sophisticated style and wore a thick coat of mascara so that her eyes looked knowing. She had finely plucked eyebrows that she raised when she took a second look at you.
    She hardly spoke to me that first week. Then one time in class I was doodling on the back of my new school notebook, drawing an ultrahip cool-cat Magda. I made her a real pussycat with sharp whiskers and a fluffy tail. I drew me as a little fat mouse, frightened of Magda, all twitchy nose and scrabbly paws. Magda suddenly leant over me to see what I was doing. She worked it out at once. “Hey, Ellie! That’s
great,
” she said.
    So I drew some more stuff and she liked that too. We were friends after that. She wanted me to be her
best
friend.
    Only of course I had Nadine. And Nadine didn’t like Magda at all at first. But when Magda invited me over to her place one day after school I forced Nadine to come too. I wanted moral support more than anything else. I imagined Magda living this amazing cool independent existence. I couldn’t have been more wrong. She’s got this lovely noisy interfering funny family. Magda’s the baby. Everyone’s pet. She acts like a cute little kid at home. Anyway, she invited Nadine and me up to her bedroom and she gave us both a full makeup job. I loved it. She actually made me look like I had big dark eyes behind my specs and she did this subtle line each side of my face so it looked like I had cheekbones. It was the first time I’d ever worn makeup and I thought it was wonderful. Nadine was a bit sniffy. Magda said it was her turn. She gave Nadine a real gothic look, chalk-white face and truly black lipstick and astonishing outlined eyes. When Nadine saw herself in the mirror she smiled all over her amazing new face and wanted Magda to be her friend too.
    So we’ve been this best-friend threesome ever since, right through Years Seven and Eight. Now we’re Year Nine, thirteen—well, Magda’s nearly fourteen, and Nadine is fourteen in December, but I’ve got to wait all the way round till next June.
    It’s irritating. I really look the youngest now, because I’m still so small and roly-poly with these revoltingly chubby cheeks. I have
dimples,
for goodness’ sake. I’m used to Magda looking older, especially now she’s highlighted her hair. But Nadine used to look really young for her age with her heart-shaped face and her long black hair tumbling round her shoulders like an Alice in negative. Now she looks . . . different.
    “Come on, then, I haven’t seen you both for ages! What have you been up to?” says Magda, but she doesn’t pause for breath. She tells Nadine and me all about her Spanish holiday, and how all these waiters kept waylaying her and this guy at the pool kept picking her up and throwing her in the water and this other much older guy kept trying to buy her drinks at the poolside. . . . This is the standard Magda stuff and I don’t always concentrate because I’m watching Nadine. She doesn’t look as if she’s listening either, bending forward so that her hair hides her face like a black velvet curtain. She’s inking a tattoo on her wrist with a black felt-tip pen, a careful heart with an elaborate inked frill. This is a change for Nadine. Her tattoos are usually skulls or spiders.
    “What about you, Nadine?” I say the second Magda shuts up.
    “
What
about me?” says Nadine. “You mean my hols? I saw you after. Before you went to your cottage. It was hell. Relentlessly cheery. And you had to queue for hours and all the kids had Mickey Mouse ears and there were all these giant cartoon characters
waving
at everyone. It was all so bright. It made my eyes ache.”
    “Crawl back to your coffin, Ms. Vampire,” says Magda, laughing. “I bet Natasha loved