Out of Order Read Online Free

grumbled.
    “You suck,” Jessa harrumphed.
    “I have to, because I know you don’t.”
    Jessa’s affronted little noise of distress cracked me up while Kate just looked smug. Ricky laughed too and pushed open the door the rest of the way, clutching her purse.
    “Thanks, you guys,” she said, sounding slightly hopeful. “You are true friends.”
    “No. We’re not true friends until we tell you that you have snot all over your face, and it’s very distracting,” Jessa said, pulling a pack of tissues out of her little gold clutch and offering it to Ricky. “It’s grossing me out.”
    “Sorry,” Ricky said, taking a tissue and walking to the mirror. “Oh my God, you’re right. I’m disgusting.”
    “You’re not disgusting,” I protested. “You’re beautiful.”
    “Under all the snot,” Kate interjected. I shot her a glare to the best of my ability, but no one ever seems to get them. My mom’s evil eye gene had managed to skip right over me.
    “Even with the snot. Although, here, let me help you—” I grabbed a handful of paper towels and wet them, going after her snot and smeared makeup with a vengeance.
    “You are such a good friend, Corey,” Ricky said, crying again. “What did I ever do to deserve you guys?”
    “I don’t know about you, but I think it was all the homework help. You basically got me through algebra single-handedly, and you’re not even Asian,” Kate said, laughing.
    “That’s racist,” I said halfheartedly. I wasn’t in the least bit offended. The Asian jokes got old after a while, and Kate and I had been friends since the third grade. I’d heard them all.
    “No, what’s racist is your abandonment of your roots,” Kate said. “Who’s ever heard of an Asian sucking at math as hard as you suck at math?”
    “First of all, I’m Vietnamese,” I pointed out for the hundredth time—as if it mattered. No one in a small town cares what flavor of Asian you are when you’re one of three nonwhite students in your graduating class. “Secondly, I don’t suck —”
    “You suck,” all three of the other girls said in creepy unison.
    Ricky began to dig through her purse for her eyeliner to attempt to correct the damage her crying had done. (It was impossible. Her eyes were far too red, her cheeks too splotchy.)
    “Wow. Okay. Nice to know how valued I am in our social circle.”
    “You hold our social circle together. Without you, there would be no circle. It would be two separate line segments.”
    I stared at Jessa blankly, waiting for more explanation. She rolled her eyes at me.
    “You and I became friends on the first day of third grade. You made friends with Erica in chess club and introduced her to me during the Christmas play. That same year I made friends with Katherine through dance class because she was in the other third grade class and introduced her to you in art club on Valentine’s Day. Erica and Katherine made friends with each other at your birthday party in June, where the four of us made that pact to be best friends forever. Had you and I not been friends, or if we had had a falling out sometime before Katherine and Erica became friends, or if we’d stopped being friends and made them choose sides, you’d have Erica and I’d have Katherine, but no social circle. You are the… radius?”
    I was amazed at Jessa’s flawless memory. I could hardly remember a time before the four of us had been best friends. Instead of saying that, I smiled and said, “You suck at geometry harder than I do, but I concede your point. I am the nucleus of the atom that is our social group.”
    “You are a very good nucleus,” Ricky hiccoughed, desperately powdering her nose. She was heinously pale, almost a whole shade lighter than the lightest makeup, and wearing anything on her skin made it look like a bad fake tan. (A bad fake tan that stopped at her jaw line and didn’t really help at all with the blotches.)
    “Thank you.”
    Ricky finally gave up trying to