Frenemies Read Online Free

sang in the school choir as well as the church choir, and often gave impromptu concerts to my collection of stuffed animals.
    I’d always had a thing for
The Music Man
, so when Broadway mysteriously failed to come calling for me in Boston, I went with my second choice and got my master’s in Library and Information Science. I soon discovered that Marion the Librarian was expected to do a little bit more than sing and wear spectacles these days, however. While I was in grad school, I happened upon a part-time job in a tiny museum no one had ever heard of—the Choate Downey Museum, just a few streets off the Common. The Choate Downey Museum boasted the mediocre art and mediocre collections of the Downey family, of which Minerva Choate Downey was the current heir and curator.
    She was also a complete lunatic.
    When I graduated from Simmons with my master’s in hand, I had big dreams of, say, a cushy job at Harvard or (during a brief, giddy spring fever in which relocation seemed crucial) the New York Public Library. But Minerva sat me down and offered me a full-time salary, excellent benefits, and the impressive title of head librarian. I was also the only librarian—the only employee, in fact—but at just twenty-five, who was I to argue?
    Four years later, I was still head librarian of the Choate Downey Museum, and while from time to time I dreamed about a
really
exciting job—being a superspy like Sydney Bristow on
Alias
, for example—I was fairly content. The fact was, I loved what I did. I got paid to search for information, then to arrange it so others could experience the same voyage of discovery. I got to charter trips through knowledge. I spent my days researching questions no one in the world but me might ask—but if I decided the answer needed to be known, as head librarian I got to decide to search for it.
    True, I had to deal with Minerva and her many delusions, but I tended to chalk that up in the “entertainment” column. After all, Georgia had the theoretically more exciting job, being a big-time lawyer, but I was the one who got to spend whole mornings seriously debating whether or not it was appropriate for Minerva to identify herself as One of the Blood to the hapless fools who got lost on their tours of Revolutionary War Boston and wandered into our front hall. I doubted Georgia had that kind of fun while filing documents and typing out briefs.
    Then again, Georgia lived for corporate law. Who knew what she found fun?
    “I thought we had an anti-karaoke pact,” Georgia said when she appeared before me that afternoon in the wide foyer that also served as my office. “It was my first year of law school, we chose to sing that 4 Non Blondes song about sixty times, and the next morning we
made vows.
” She was shivering, and let the heavy door slam shut behind her, but not before a blast of frigid air rushed in from the street so I could shiver too. I wrapped the scarf I used to combat the Museum’s inevitable drafts tighter around my neck.
    “Hi, Georgia,” I said from behind my desk, tucked at the foot of the stairs. On good days, that desk made me feel powerful and in control. I faced the day—and the door—with confidence. On other days, I felt lost and somewhat exposed behind it. Today I was still too embarrassed from the night before to care.
    “I think that if we were breaking vows around here, I should have been consulted,” Georgia continued. “That’s all I’m saying.”
    “Next time I accidentally humiliate myself in front of my ex and his new skank who happens to be my ex-friend—”
    “Are you sure you were
actually
friends with Helen? I mean, you were, but was she? Does she even know how to be friends with someone who doesn’t want to sleep with her?”
    “—I’ll be sure to interrupt your depositions so you can race to my side and, hopefully, stop it.” I slumped down in my chair. “I just can’t understand how, in the space of two and a half weeks, I went from