Best Friends (Until Someone Better Comes Along) Read Online Free Page A

“Woo-hoo!”
    â€œThat is seriously impossible,” Lobster Boy called loudly. “I’m impressed.”
    Impressed by a girl who can hold her breath and swim for twenty whole seconds? What? If I’d done something that lame with my friends, they would have laughed so hard Heidi would be crying. Apparently, though, Lobster Boy was easily impressed. Maybe he wasn’t quite as cute as I’d been giving him credit for.
    That’s when I realized that they maybe hadn’t been talking about me at all. . . . Was it possible that they’d been talking about Ava’s stupid water tricks the whole time? When were they going to talk about me? Surely, they were going to talk about me.
    But I listened for a while longer, waiting to hear my name. Still nothing. All they talked about was their “amazing” swimming challenges, and about something dorky called Canoe Wars. Finally, I realized I was eavesdropping on the most boring conversation in the history of time. Okay, maybe that was sort of exaggerating—but this was definitely close to the most boring conversation ever. It was the most boring conversation I’d ever heard. So how lame did it make me that I was actually listening to it? That I’d climbed over animal poo (excrement!) to listen to it?
    I stood up, holding Coco tightly so she wouldn’t squirm as I escaped my hiding spot. I picked my way over branches and past the dead tree, walking faster and faster until I was back at my so-called cottage again. What a waste of time! Annoyed, I kicked at the bottom of the door and watched as it rattled. I felt foolish for wasting my time snooping on people who obviously had nothing interesting to talk about. What if I’d been caught? I shuddered at the thought that these people might judge me, then pushed open the door to the cabin and stormed inside.
    I hadn’t gotten a good look at the Cardinal cabin when we first arrived, because my dad had been so busy hustling me down to the lake to make first impressions. I should have just stayed back, since my first impression didn’t go at all the way I would have liked. As Coco found her bed in the corner by the door, I scanned the dimly lit room. The living room was separated from the kitchen by a wall of low-hanging cabinets. Someone had scratched something totally inappropriate onto the back of one of the cabinets. Another someone had made the bad choice to paint over the scratching . . . which made it look like the crude word was an unframed work of art hanging on the living room side of the cabinet wall.
    All the walls and furniture in the tiny cabin were wood,which made it seem a little more cottage-like. But the whole place also just looked uncomfortable, like I was going to get splinters in my butt every time I sat down to look through a magazine. There was nowhere to flop—I would have happily traded Lobster Boy for my fluffy rug from home—and nowhere to curl up. I had a feeling I’d be spending a lot of time alone, planted in one of these splintery seats, unless some miracle happened and I suddenly wanted to hang out with two of the biggest nobodies from my school. And it wasn’t like that was going to happen. Even if they came crawling back to beg me to hang out with them.
    I peeked into the bathroom, which was small and rustic (meaning “old”). The sink was so tiny I could hardly fit both hands inside the basin, and the toilet had a crack in the seat that looked like it would pinch. There was no point in even looking at the shower, since the shower curtain was old and musty, so I could only imagine what the shower itself might look like. I was probably going to get foot fungus.
    There were two bedrooms—thank goodness. As I’d suspected might happen, my bag had found its way from the car to my room, and my clothes had already been unpacked and neatly folded in the dresser drawers. This was my mother’s