Beware That Girl Read Online Free Page A

except for the part where I really wanted Mr. Sutherland—Mary-Catherine’s father—to be my father.
    Sometimes I wanted it so much I felt sick.
    He was such a nice dad.
    Mr. Sutherland was an important businessman. He had four different suits and a dark brown briefcase with worn handles. He worked in an office with a door in one of those big towers on Wall Street. His office was on the thirty-fourth floor! When school was over, Mary-Catherine and I were going to meet him in his personal office and then we were going to go out for lunch.
    He said.
    Mr. Sutherland called me “slugger” because I was on the Christie Pirates softball team. I was deeply artistic and athletic. It’s a rare combination, Mr. Sutherland said. Sometimes, when he got home early, he would get the three of us big tall glasses of Coca-Cola with lots of ice and then ask us about school or our friends or just stuff. He asked me too, not just Mary-Catherine.
    I hated Coca-Cola.
    But I drank it right down and I always said, “Thanks, Mr. Sutherland!” And he always winked at me and said, “Well, you’re welcome, slugger.”
    Anyway, Mary-Catherine and I were hands down making the most fancy cards in the whole class. Father Bob said that God is in the details. Our stuff was always bursting with God. My card said “You Are My Hero” on the front and “Happy Father’s Day to the BEST Dad in the World” over a pop-up striped tie on the inside.
    I headed straight to the park after school.
    I looked all sad.

    You never know. Sister Rose could go right by in the school van or something.
    There was a spot of bare earth behind the orangey roses and just in front of the yellow bushes. I dug a hole with my ruler, then I folded up my card and buried it. I made a sign of the cross. Not a little fast one in the middle of your chest but a big one—just in case.
    I prayed.
    Not for my father.
    For Mary-Catherine’s.
    I prayed that God in his infinite wisdom would figure out how to make Mr. Sutherland my father. And that he would do this without hurting Mrs. Sutherland, who’s nice enough, or Mary-Catherine, who’s my very best friend, or my mother, who has been hurt bad already. Thank you very much. Amen.
    —
    I prayed a lot when I was ten. I have not prayed since.

It was going to be an A-list party, and that would have mattered to Olivia before, sort of. But not now. Suze Sheardown and Emily Wong were throwing a birthday bash for Alejandra Morena, whose parents were in Colombia. All the best kids from Waverly and Rigby, Waverly’s brother school, would be there. Alejandra was harmless and sweet in that “which one is she again?” way. A total yawn, in other words. But that wasn’t why Olivia’s answer was no.
    Been there, done that, directed the movie. Olivia sighed, swallowed a pill and started wandering through the penthouse. She had lobbied hard for a redo of grade twelve at Waverly rather than somewhere else. As he did with almost everything, her father had smoothed the way and reentry was a nonissue. Why had she been so hell-bent on returning? She couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. Olivia kept her distance, but when she had to, she mimicked the pitch-perfect giggling and the squeals of fake shock, fake outrage and fake sympathy—all the hallmarks of any good girls’ private school. It was easy.

    What threw Olivia was how much older she felt than the other girls. Sure, some of them were already eighteen, but when she was gliding through Waverly’s halls, Olivia felt like she was forty. This further dampened any desire to hit the party circuit. What drowned it completely was the lack of a posse. Olivia didn’t have a crew anymore. Her former best friends, Anita, Gwen and Jessica, were away at college. Oh sure, they sent flowers like clockwork, and they still texted and messaged on occasion, but on Facebook, so…you know. She could hardly walk into a party alone. Olivia needed at least one pal. You didn’t need a phalanx in grade