Girl's Guide to Witchcraft Read Online Free Page A

stowaway’s convention, but that was going to have to do.
    Besides, Five Guys Burgers and Fries did not exactly require the height of fashion to set foot inside its doors. The counter was already three-deep when we got there, and we took a moment to stare up at the menu, red letters stamped on a broad white board. Simple: hamburgers, fries, toppings (extra charge for cheese and bacon). Cold soda. Peanuts to munch on while we waited. The smell of hot grease made me salivate like one of Pavlov’s dogs.
    It was a sign of how long I’d known Melissa that I could order for her without confirming what she wanted. I stepped up to the counter and asked for one good burger (cheese, bacon, grilled onions and mushrooms, lettuce, tomato) and one pitifully flawed burger (mustard, ketchup, nothing else at all in the world, poor bare thing), along with a large order of fries for us to split. Before I could finish giving Melissa grief over her denuded choice of lunch, we found ourselves at a Formica-covered table.
    The first bite was heaven. Hot beef and melted cheese and crispy bacon, with juice running down my fingers and a tiny rivulet snaking beside my lips. I closed my eyes and resisted the urge to moan out loud.
    “Hey,” Melissa said. “Isn’t that your Jason?”
    I whirled around without thinking.
    So much for cool. So much for suave. So much for calm and self-possessed and witty and urbane. If my whiplash motion had not drawn his eyes to me, my explosion of coughing would have. Five Guys Burgers made a perfect meal, but they were lousy down the windpipe.
    When I was finally able to breathe again, I saw the true extent of the disaster. My Imaginary Boyfriend was not merely sitting in the same dive-y restaurant that I shared with Melissa. He hadn’t just seen me choke on a bite of hamburger the size of a pack of cards. He wasn’t only privy to my dirt-streaked arms and my stained T-shirt.
    He was eating with another woman.
    A woman who, even seated, clearly had the body of a classically trained ballerina. She was tall and thin— willowy is the phrase that you read in books. She had soft brown hair with chunks of buttery-blond that I could tell weren’t highlights—it was her own naturally perfect coloring. Her eyes were pale blue, framed by the longest, darkest lashes that Lady Maybelline had ever touched.
    Who was I kidding? Maybelline? That woman didn’t buy her cosmetics at a drugstore. Even Sephora would be too downscale for her. She probably had colors mixed by hand at some boutique in New York. But the most astonishing thing about her mascara? It was totally, completely waterproof.
    The woman was crying.
    And that made me even more jealous of her. Not only was she sitting across the table from my Imaginary Boyfriend. Not only did she have a body to die for and a face to match. Not only did she have more elegance in her elongated pinky than I had in my entire body. But she could cry without her nose turning red and her face going blotchy. I hated her.
    “Don’t look!” I hissed to Melissa. Well, as much as anyone could hiss a command that had no s ’s in it. I made a big show of eating a French fry. One little French fry. One that wouldn’t put too many inches on my hips. “What are they doing?”
    “How can I know, if you won’t let me look?”
    “Melissa,” I warned, swallowing some Diet Coke as I tried to wash away the scratchy feeling left over from choking.
    She gave in with a grin. “He’s offering her his napkin. She’s wiping her nose. No. She’s dabbing at her nose. My God, she looks like a princess.”
    “I don’t need to hear that!” I stuffed three emergency fries into my mouth, and the salty, steamy potato almost drowned out the report.
    “Hurry up,” Melissa said with a sudden urgency. “Finish that bite. They’re coming this way.”
    I gulped and swallowed and even found a second to take a sip of soda. By the time Jason stopped by our table, I’d pasted a smile on my lips, but it