Popularity Takeover Read Online Free Page A

marched off down the tree-lined hill, past the elegant row of renovated Victorian mansions. Maybe she would go to Starbucks and do some online research for her biology project. Or maybe she’d read another chapter of their honors English novel. Or maybe she’d just enjoy a café mocha, something she couldn’t do with the Ashleys, since they all had to get Ashley’s favorite drink: the soy latte, which tasted like extra hot crap, in her humble opinion.
    She pondered her options and decided that what she really wanted to do was take a casual stroll . . . one that might take her past the divey diner off Fillmore where Max and his friends liked to hang out. Really, she could use some fresh air after too many stuffy hours locked inside Miss Gamble’s.
    Lili scooted past the door of Starbucks and kept walking, trying to tell herself she was just going for an innocent walk, rather than desperately trying to track Max down, like some psycho stalker. There wasn’t any harm in walking for a few more blocks, was there?
    Although the diner was less than ten minutes’ walkfrom Starbucks, Lili felt like it was a different world. She remembered the last time she was there—more than two months ago, which felt like an eternity. All she’d wanted to do then was hang out with Max and (if she was honest with herself) impress him. Lili sighed, scuffing her Mary Janes along the sidewalk. Well, that certainly hadn’t worked out.
    She’d agreed to go on a camping trip that had turned into a nightmare, from the near attack by a bear—which no one else saw—to the flooding of the campsite, to the supergrounding she got when her parents found out about the trip. Not to mention having to spend time with his loser goth friends and their bitchy girlfriends, Cassandra and Jezebel.
    Speaking of whom . . . rounding the corner, Lili caught a horrifying glimpse of what looked suspiciously like the dyed-red hair of Cassandra Allison. She was sashaying into the diner, laughing her horrible horsey laugh. Lili shuddered and instinctively ducked into another store doorway. Weedy, whiny Cassandra was one person Lili never wanted to see again.
    Why did Max have such atrocious friends? He didn’t seem to have anything in common with them. Max was friendly and sweet and smart, while his friends were abunch of irritating posers. Was it just because they all liked the same kind of music? What kind of friendship was that? Then she wondered if she was friends with the Ashleys because they all liked the same kind of clothes.
    Lili edged along the street, pretending to look in store windows. Not that she wanted to buy anything for sale on this block, which mainly seemed to consist of tattoo parlors, incense-scented boutiques that featured marijuana-leaf-design T-shirts, and costume shops that sold cheap, brightly colored wigs that probably made your head itch after five minutes.
    With every step, she drew nearer to the diner, with its dirty windows and cracked awning, and her heart started thudding and skipping like a maniac. She tried to act oh-so-casual as she crept up to the window—obscured, she hoped, by the chipped letters spelling out the diner’s name across the glass (appropriately enough, it was called Garage)—and paused to peek through the gap between the final G and the E .
    Max was there.
    He was sitting in one of the diner’s vinyl booths with his buddies Jason and Quentin. Though he had his back to Lili, she could tell it was him—she’d know those cowlicks in his platinum blond hair anywhere. Justseeing the back of his head made her feel stupidly weak in the knees.
    Cassandra was standing at the end of the table, telling some (no doubt) boring story and running a hand through her stringy hair. Her BFF Jezebel was snuggled up to Jason, picking at her pierced nostril. Quentin, Cassandra’s boyfriend, sat on the other side of Jezebel, gazing up at Cass-ualty with his usual