Rebel, Bully, Geek, Pariah Read Online Free Page A

thick and shiny you usually only see in magazines. It had made her stand out, even among the rest of the Barbies who were always bobbing along in her wake. The Barbies all still had their perfect hair, but sometime freshman year, they started following someone else around. I wondered whether Andi had violated some pretty-girl code when she twisted her hair and started sporting that green army jacket. Inany case, I hadn’t seen her with her former clique since freshman year.
    And I couldn’t see her at all now. Either she had a chameleon’s knack for blending in, or she had skipped past the party and run deeper into the woods. Which meant the violin was gone, too.
    â€œAttention, upperclassmen!” someone over by the keg bellowed. He was answered with a few cheers and whistles. “Junior year is going to ROCK!”
    I sighed.
If you say so, dude.
    A hand touched my shoulder then, and the stink of beer breath blew across my face.
    For one irrational moment, I was five years old again, and Mama was drunk and trying to kiss me good night, but all I wanted to do was pull the comforter over my face so I wouldn’t have to smell whatever she’d been drinking.
    â€œWhy susha waffle?” the beer breather said in my ear.
    I leaned away from the voice, from the smell, and felt the hand slip off my shoulder.
    The girl attached to the hand wobbled for a second on long, thin legs, but managed to stay standing. She smiled down at me, waiting for my answer to whatever question she thought she had asked.
    â€œI don’t—I didn’t hear you right,” I said.
    She leaned close to me again, her breath now hitting me smack in the face. “Why. Such. A. Wall. Flower?”
    The smell. The
smell
.
    I reached up to grab her forearms and push her away. Once I got her upright and out of my personal space, I could see she wasone of Andi’s former followers—the Barbies who controlled what was cool and what wasn’t at Jefferson. I was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to touch the Barbies. I braced myself for her wrath.
    But she only smiled as though I’d done her a favor. “Thanks,” she said. “I’m tipsy.”
    If by “tipsy” she meant about to tip
over
, then yeah, I had to agree.
    â€œI’m not a wallflower,” I said.
    â€œNo?”
    â€œCan’t be a wallflower without walls. I’m a . . . a . . .” My eyes landed on the tree I’d been leaning against. “I’m a tree flower.”
    Oh my God, please let the earth open up now and suck me and the tree both down a big black hole.
    â€œI mean—”
    â€œA treeflur,” she slurred. “That’s pretty. You’re pretty.”
    â€œOh. Um . . . thanks.”
    This Barbie wasn’t so bad.
    â€œTess, if you think that’s pretty, I’m cutting you off.”
    The Barbie—Tess—and I spun at the sound of the voice, but the spin was too much for Tess, and she sidestepped into the tree behind me.
    â€œWhoa,” she said. “Tree.”
    â€œYes, Tess, tree. See tree stand. See Tess stumble.” The voice belonged to a blond ponytail and comically high cheekbones. Georgia Jones—the new Andi, after Andi became . . . something else. Maybe there was always a new Barbie waiting in the wings to step up if the chief B went AWOL.
    â€œDo I know you?”
    It took me a second to realize Georgia was talking to me. How do you answer a question like that? How should I know whether she knew me? We were in some of the same classes, and I certainly knew
of
her, so maybe she knew of me, too—but did that mean she
knew
me?
    â€œYou look familiar,” she said.
    â€œShe’s a tree flower.” Tess reached an unsteady hand out to pet the curls spilling out from under my hat and fixed an unfocused gaze on me. “Look at her eyes. Pretty green. Pretty flower. Can we keep