Jealousy (16 page)

I added myself as a contact to Sasha's address book. It took me three times as long to type the message—my fingers kept hitting all the wrong keys because they were shaking.

Sasha took her phone when I offered it back to her. My own phone beeped with a text from Sasha. Now I had her number.

“Good,” she said, pulling a Lip Smackers from her
pocket. “And seriously. Anytime.” She applied a coat of shiny, berry-tinted Dr Pepper gloss. I smiled to myself—the rumors of Sasha's lip gloss addiction were
definitely
true.

Sasha smiled, gave me a small wave, and headed out of the courtyard.

I forced myself to sit on the bench until I was a thousand percent sure that Sasha was gone. Then I stood and hurried to Hawthorne at a flat-out run to tell Khloe everything.

After I told
Khloe about meeting The Famous Sasha Silver and we analyzed every detail of the conversation, Khloe got a serious look on her face.

“Laur, I want to apologize about the Taylor sitch,” Khloe said.

We were sitting cross-legged on our fluffy carpet, facing each other.

“I talked to Clare, and we both agreed we were totally wrong,” Khloe continued. “You know Taylor better than us, and we should have listened to you. I trust you implicitly, and I should have trusted your instincts. I'm sorry.”

I looked into Khloe's brown eyes and saw the regret. I couldn't hold this against her.

“Khloe, wow,” I said. “Thank you. Of course I forgive you and Clare. You're my roommate and best friend—I know you were only looking out for me. Clare and I have gotten a lot closer too, and she only had good intentions.”

I reached out and touched Khloe's knee. She was cozy in black leggings with a stripe of cheetah print down each side. She'd found the leggings and an off-the-shoulder terry-cloth sweater at Deb online a few weeks ago.

Khloe smiled. A
huge
smile. “Omigod, LT. I'm so glad we're okay! I hate it when things are off between us! Wheeew!” She let out a giant sigh, flopping onto her back.

I giggled. “It's not funny, but I know what you mean. It sticks with me every second when we're fighting or things aren't right with our friendship. I think it's an extra-stressful time right now.”

Khloe, still lying with her legs stretched in front of her just beside me, propped herself up on her elbows. “Tell me about it.”

“We've got,” I started, holding up a hand to count, “Parents' Weekend. A play. A glee club performance for the families. Riding lessons. Tons of schoolwork. Did I mention families?”

We giggled, and I held one palm up like a high five and
on the other hand just my thumb to give her a high six.

“Six things,” I said. “And these are only the
B-I-G
things.”

“Oh God,” Khloe said, dropping back onto the rug. “Don't even try to count all the little things. You'll run out of fingers
and
toes.”

I took a deep breath. I needed some calming tea. Maybe some of the Celestial Seasonings Honey Vanilla Chamomile that Mom had sent me last week.

“We need to do something, I don't know,
bonding
,” Khloe said. A mischievous smile played on her lips. “Agree?”

“Most definitely. What do you have in mind?” I grinned.

“Oh, maybe a little thing called . . . online shopping?” Khloe sat up, staring at me and wiggling her eyebrows.

“
Ooh la la!
Grab your laptop!”

We got up, grabbed our computers, and lay on our stomachs across my bed. The need for calming tea completely disappeared.

“I think,” Khloe said, “we need new socks. Not the boring white ones, but awesome ones for fall that act as accessories. What do you think?”

“I love that idea,” I said. “We could keep them in a bin and share like we do with everything else.”

“Yes!” Khloe said, shimmying her shoulders.

“It's so funny that you said socks, because I've been looking at the
coolest
socks online the past couple of days. I found the ultimate never-shopping-anywhere-else Website. It's going down as an EBT.” I frowned. “Well, socks aren't
beauty
, technically, so I guess we need a new category.”

“EST!” Khloe said.

“Essential style trick!” we said simultaneously.

Giggling, I opened Firefox and pulled up the Website. “Look. At. It.” I said. “I've been trying to figure out a way to justify a huge charge on my credit card as an ‘emergency,' but I think seeing ‘Sock Dreams' as the charge will ruin my defense.”

Khloe grinned. “Lucky for us, we have some cash in our checking accounts.”

“
Exactly.
Check these out.”

I showed Khloe the home page of Sock Dreams's Website. Then we got lost in socks. Ankle socks. Knee-high socks. Over-the-knee socks. Toe socks. Socks with rainbows. Argyle. Stripes. Fall patterns. Winter shades.

“Let's shop for LT socks first,” Khloe said. “Then Khloe socks.”

“Deal,” I said.

Almost an hour later, I had an overflowing cart. Khloe and I had added every single pair of socks we liked, promising we'd cut socks before I checked out.

“Okay, I have to go through my cart, narrow it down, and check out,” I said. “If I don't stop now, I'll never finish homework. Help me choose!”

Khloe put on her serious face. “Khloe Kinsella at your service.”

It took us half an hour to settle on five pairs that I loved and Khloe fawned over: Extraordinary Harvest Rainbow Thigh-Highs (
parfait
to keep me warm during fall, and the colors—pomegranate, burnt orange, and plum, among others—were in for the season), Angora Faux Zipper Knee-Highs (gray with red tops and chic zipper detail), Confetti Kneesocks (ivory with army-green top and
très
cute polka dots), Cotton Argyle Tights (I'd chosen gray, black, and purple colors), and Peacock Feather Knee-Highs (black with a metallic-gold-and-turquoise peacock feather).

I let out a happy sigh once I'd checked out.

“I'm going to
so
be bugging Christina about the mail!” I said. “I wish we could snap our fingers and make the order appear right now.”

“If online shopping worked that way, it would be sooo
bad,” Khloe said, shaking her head. “I'd be broke, and you'd have to stage an intervention and force me to go to Shopaholics Anonymous meetings!”

We laughed.

“Seriously,” Khloe said. “Total score, LT. Now . . . we're about to double our new collection!”

She turned her laptop screen in my direction. “My turn! Help me choose five.”

“And
this
is why it's amaze to have a best friend and roomie that you can share clothes with,” I said.

Khloe and I high-fived. I closed my laptop lid and leaned toward her computer. Together we browsed the Website for Khloe-like socks.

As we shopped, I let out a silent breath of relief that Khloe and I were okay again. I wasn't me without my best friend.

MONDAY EVENING I SETTLED INTO MY SEAT
at the theater. Opening night for
Beauty and the Beast
had sold out. I'd checked. Three times. I'd thought about Khloe all day and had only seen her after classes when I was changing for riding. She'd been excused from her lesson for the day, because her drama teacher wanted KK rested and to have plenty of time to get to the theater for makeup and costume.

Pre-performance Khloe was a side of her I'd never seen. She'd been
terrified.

“Lauren,” she had said hours ago. “I think I'm going to puke. I can't do this!”

“Khlo, yes you can. You
are
Belle.” I pulled my roommate away from the center of the room, where she was
pacing a hole in the floor, and gently pushed her into her desk chair.

“You know
every
line in the play. Not just your lines but everyone's! You could probably recite all of
Beauty
backward.” I crouched down and looked into my roomie's worried eyes.

“But I didn't get the role of Belle. I was cast as Mrs. Potts. Riley was supposed to be Belle! There had to be a reason why I wasn't cast as the lead, and it had something to do with me not being good enough.”

“Khloe.” My voice was firm. “You're more than good enough. You're right—Riley did get the role, but you were always the understudy. We'll never know why you weren't cast as the lead, and we could spend hours trying to guess. But know what?”

“What?” Khloe asked in a small voice.

“You
are
Belle now. I've run lines with you. I've seen you practice. I wouldn't lie to you and say ‘Oh, Khloe, you're going to be amazing!' if I didn't think it was true. I'm being one hundred percent honest. I promise.”

“Really?” Khloe's heaving chest started to slow, and color began to return to her face.

“Promise on our BFFness. I'm going to be in the audience tonight and every single night, silently cheering you
on. You're a great actress, Khloe Kinsella. I can't wait to see you bring Belle to life.”

A flutter of the red velvet curtain pulled me out of the memory. I'd gotten Khloe calmed down and had her laughing and back to Old Khloe by the time I'd left for my riding lesson. I'd lucked out that Mr. Conner had spent today's session teaching from a chapter in our horse manual instead of having us do flat work or jumping.

My intermediate class had spent the session covering a topic I thankfully knew—conformation. When I'd been called on to point out a conformation fault on a sketch of a horse on a piece of paper that Mr. Conner had given each of us, I'd answered the question right.

The theater kept filling as the seconds ticked down to the start of the play. Under my seat was a surprise for Khloe—a bouquet of daisies and baby's breath that I'd ordered online from the local florist. I'd managed to hide them from her all day by stashing them in one of the common room cupboards, and I couldn't wait to give them to her when the play ended.

The seat to my right was one of the few empty spots. It belonged to Cole, and he and I had bought tickets during lunch and made sure we had seats together.

I pulled my phone from my purse, turned it on silent,
and opened Chatter. I typed a quick update.
LaurBell: Abt 2 watch KK give a Tony-worthy performance as Belle! Très excited!

A familiar laugh cut through the talk in the theater. I didn't glance up as I put away my phone.
Do not look
, I told myself. But my body didn't listen to the warning voice. I glanced up, and two rows ahead Lacey sat with her friends. She was twisted around in her seat and chatting with someone in the row behind her. Her eyes met mine, and her mouth twisted into a fake smile. Lacey rolled her eyes, looking at me to make sure I'd seen her, then focused her attention back on the girl she was talking to.

“
That
was beyond tacky.”

Cole slid in front of me and sank into the cushy seat next to me, sliding out of his coat.

“You mean Lacey?” I asked.

“Um, yeah. The girl's embarrassing herself so much. This whole ‘Lauren's got two hotties after her' talk is so old. No one's even listening to her anymore. It's like she's talking to herself.”

I shook my head. “People
are
listening. Don't pretend you haven't noticed that almost every girl in our grade won't talk to me anymore and is suddenly BFFs with Lacey.”

It was Cole's turn for an eye roll. He brushed his light-brown hair off his forehead.

“All of those brainwashed girls are going to be
incredibly
embarrassed when they realize they'd ever listened to Lacey in the first place.” Cole's voice rose and was tinged with anger. “They're going to remember how much they like you, and they're going to either flood you with apologies or be so embarrassed that they try to be your friends and pretend nothing ever happened.”