The Lifeboat Clique Read Online Free

I was stuck with my visibly nonawesome, caring, unstoned mother, who was also pretty smart.
    My only alternative was to sneak out. Easier said than done, because my mother was a night owl. I decided I would exit the house out my second-story window and then drop into the bushes below. I explained my plan to my cat, Sonny Boy, who I could tell anything to because he didn’t give a rat’s ass. I could escape successfully and go to the most important party in my life. Or I could die. It was all the same to him.
    I had this thing I did where I talked to Sonny Boy and then answered myself in a high-pitched voice that was supposed to be Sonny Boy talking back. Try this someday when you find yourself friendless.
    Me: Sonny Boy, guess what?
    SB (high voice): I don’t care.
    Me: I’m sneaking out tonight.
    SB (high voice): I think I have a crust of cat litter stuck to my butt. Could you check?
    Me: I’ve been invited to a party by this dreamy guy named Croix, and this could change everything.
    Sonny Boy stared at me with his golden eyes and then licked his paw pads and smoothed down the sleek fur on his small, uncaring head.
    Our talk was over.
    I waited until ten o’clock and then went downstairs, where my mother was reading a book from self-help guruRobert Pathway while someone on TV interviewed a Cal Tech scientist about the earthquake we’d had that afternoon. The scientist was pointing to a digital chart and didn’t seem alarmed. No one was, because the killer version of the quake hadn’t struck yet, and the scientists and everyone else were just alarmed by everyday things like, would not finishing your antibiotics kill you or is the world running out of helium or is your teenage daughter about to sneak out to an illegal party in the name of some desperate, delusional love?
    My mother was kind of an earthy type or maybe just the type who struggles with details. She had longish brown hair that never looked quite combed. Her eyebrows were always grown in because she’d forget to pluck them until the job got too big and then she’d just say the hell with it. And her clothes had apparently never read a color chart together. I thought her look was refreshing in this town full of phonies. I suppose my father once did too.
    â€œHey, Mom,” I said. I bent to give her a hug, and she hugged me back with one arm.
    â€œHow are you?”
    â€œGood.”
    â€œYou’ll be even better tomorrow.” She’d been reading Robert Pathway ever since the divorce and forbade anynegative talk in the house. Which was fine, because that kept my conversation to a minimum.
    â€œOkay, Mom, if you say so.”
    â€œYou feel that earthquake?”
    â€œYes. I hid beneath my desk, and everyone laughed at me.”
    â€œMaybe you were the smart one.”
    â€œI felt like a genius.”
    â€œYou know,” she said, “there may have been a gift in that earthquake. Always look for gifts, even in things that seem . . .”
    Her voice trailed off. The look in her eyes said she wanted to pull a blanket over her head and wait for a better feeling. She hadn’t had too many gifts in a while, and we both knew it. And I wanted to comfort her somehow in that curious way daughters are sometimes called on to comfort their mothers. I wanted to stroke her arm or rub her shoulders or give her that awkward hug you give when one person is standing and the other sitting. But that would take away the lie that was keeping her going: that circumstances didn’t matter, they could be banished by the right thoughts or the right words, and she was getting better every day.
    So I settled with a “Well, I’m off to bed now” and a kiss on her cheek.
    I went upstairs and found my very best outfit. I put on my makeup carefully, screwing up the eyeliner and having to start over, all the while not talking to myself, because if I did, I’d be trying to talk myself out of this crazy