Vesper Read Online Free Page B

anyway—my dad was downstairs with his headphones turned up while he played his game, and my stepmom and Dawn were out. Whatever this was—a seizure?—wasn't stopping, and I couldn't breathe, and I couldn't move, and no one could help me, and oh God was I going to die?
    And then, as the red digital numbers on my nightstand alarm clock switched to 8:15, it was over.
    I felt... different.
    I felt good.
    I lay on the floor, my breathing calming as my heart slowed from a frantic pounding to steady, confident thumps. I arched my back and stretched my arms above my head, cricking my neck as I did. My entire body felt stiff, atrophied from lack of any appreciable amount of movement. This wouldn't do at all.
    I grabbed the edge of my desk and pulled myself to my feet. Emily Cooke's blog was still open on my computer screen, Terrizzle's message of my fatness front and center. I read it again.
    And I laughed.
    "Oh, please," I said aloud. Seriously, Terrance of all people should not be calling people fat. The boy wasn't exactly svelte himself.
    I turned to my right and caught my reflection in the mirror. The image was blurry even with my glasses on, so I squinted to see better. Hoodie two sizes too large? Check. Completely plain face and hair? Double check. No wonder Terrizzle thought I was a fatty.
    But I could show him, couldn't I? If bad teen romantic comedies taught me anything, it's that glasses-and-ponytail girls are always in need of emergency makeovers. So I snapped the glasses off my face and let my hair down. Without the glasses I didn't need to squint anymore—I could see fine.

    And though that shouldn't have made any sense, at that moment all I thought was: Wicked.
    I tilted my head. Better, but not quite right. I tore off the oppressive hoodie and T-shirt I'd had on underneath, then studied my torso, clad only in an old-lady bra my stepmom had bought me. My hips and chest? Sure, they were wider than some other girls', but in a definite old-school, busty-pinup-girl sort of way. But my waist was more or less narrow, in no way fat unless your idea of fat was anyone above a size zero, in which case you needed your head examined.
    Ten minutes later, I regarded myself in the mirror again. I'd raided the part of Dawn's closet dedicated to her clubbing clothes and had a brand-new look: a slinky, sparkly, and backless gold shirt that accentuated my décolletage, a black miniskirt, and some tall, black, spiky-heeled boots. With a pair of dangly gold hoop earrings to finish the ensemble and my eyes and lips done, I looked like Dawn normally does when she's ready to hit the clubs. Which is to say, less comically sleazy than I'd looked the night before.
    I was definitely stepping up my game and was well outside the realm of
    "chaste.” The main goal was to look like some fat teen guy's late-night fantasy. Perfect for how I planned to mess with Terrance's head.
    I opened the bedroom door, then hesitated—I could probably slip past my dad, engrossed as he was in his video game. When his construction jobs slowed down like they always did this time of year, my dad spent all his free time playing online role-playing games. He was oblivious during the best of his endless days of online gaming, but I didn't want to chance it.
    So I turned to my window. It was dark outside, but there was a depth to the darkness that I needed to explore. I raised the window. The rain had petered out sometime during the evening. A cool fall breeze rushed into my room and blew back my hair, smelling of damp leaves and excitement.
    As with the night before, I used my desk chair to boost myself up, then stepped one foot out the window. Unlike the night before, no one called me, no one barged into my room to see if I was okay.
    I ducked my torso through the window, then my other leg, and balanced on the windowsill. Clouds billowed above in a moonless sky, and the glistening road beneath me was empty. I could hear the neighbor kids next door watching something