Little Divas Read Online Free Page A

school, please remember to start setting goals, and to keep your eyes glued on them.”
    Travis, who was sitting behind me, snickered, more than likely at the idea of eyes being glued.
    She continued, “The choices you make today will affect you for the rest of your lives. You can choose to play today and have to work hard in the future, or you can work hard
today
and play as much as you want when you become an adult.”
    I started daydreaming at that point, imagining myself grown up, cruising the lake on a sailboat with friends, laughing and drinking fancy champagne. Rikki would be there, too….
    But then Travis’s raspy voice snapped me out of it.
    “Shoot,” he said, “who wants to be old, still playing freeze tag?”
    There was no way that I was going to waste my first kiss on the silliest boy in school. No thank you.
    But there Travis stood at the carnival that day, waiting with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his baggy jeans, and with a goofy grin on his face that showed his crooked teeth. He nodded his head up. “So what’s up?” he said.
    Yuuuuuuck.
    I wanted to lean over and vomit.
    “Come on, Cassidy,” Travis said.
    I felt the plastic bag slip out of my hand and heard a quick pop, followed by the quiet
shhhh
of water pouring onto the grass. Looking down was out of the question. I did not want to watch as my new pet, totally defenseless, gasped for his final breaths. I knew just how he felt. No air. Unable to breathe. Terrified, with absolutely no one there to help.
    No matter how hard I tried, even though I desperately wanted to do so, I could not get my hand to form into a fist. Rikki always had a way of making that look easy too.
    Lane looked me up and down real slowly, like the sight of me was making her feel nauseous. With one hand on her hip and the other holding the cherry-flavored lip gloss that she’d been applying nonstop for the last two years, she offered a dry laugh. “Anybody want fried fish for dinner?”
    The whole crowd crackled with laughter.
    And they
kept
laughing, and laughing, and laughing. I wanted to punch all of them, each and every one,
especially
Shantal, that traitor! There was nothing even funny in the first place.
    The bottom of my right foot felt damp inside my sandal, and I had to bite down on my bottom lip in order to stop it from quivering. I glared at Travis Jones, who was laughing the loudest.
    Somehow, though, I managed to put one foot in front of the other. Going toward home, the farther away I got, the louder their laughter seemed, and the more my eyes burned with hot tears. I never wanted to see any of them again. Ever.
    “Cassidy,” Rikki said now, sensing how tense I’d become. “I know how you feel. But I honestly think that Travis likes you. Maybe you could just give him a—”
    “He’s annoying,” I reminded her.
    She shrugged, and with her voice noticeably softer, she said, “Okay.”
    “All
of the boys at school are annoying,” I said. Then I snatched up a
Jet
magazine and started flipping through it. I stopped when I came across a picture of some actor, whose name I couldn’t recall, but I knew he was starring in a new flick about a college marching band. I pressed my thumb against his face and turned it around so that Rikki could see. “Now he’s cute.”
    She nodded, but didn’t seem all that interested.
    I flipped through the pages some more. “Let’s make our boyfriends work hard too, okay?”
    Rikki laughed a little. “What do you mean?”
    “You know,” I said. “Like all that stuff that Mary said. Before they get to smell our perfume…”
    “Oh,” Rikki said, reaching for a pack of banana Now and Laters. “Right. Of course. Not even a
whiff.”
And then a grin appeared on her face. “Yeah, we’re gonna make them sweat.”
    Tap. Tap.
    Finally! Another one of Mary’s rendezvous, as she likes to call them, had gone off without a hitch. Rikki, I was sure, was going to see to it that Mary made good on her end of the deal.