Bad Girls Read Online Free

neon.’
    ‘Really?’ Petal said doubtfully. ‘I like the red . . .’
    ‘You have to keep changing your look!’ JC insisted. ‘That’s the only way they’ll keep wanting to take your photo!’ He grinned at Rudy. ‘She’s my muse,’ he said. ‘All that lovely thick white skin, you can take her any colour you want. She’s like this amazing canvas.’
    ‘Eww! Thick skin! What the fuck, JC?’ Petal complained, taking a pull at her beer. ‘Also, don’t muses, like, do something?’
    ‘I meant thick like cream,’ JC said quickly. ‘Heavy cream.’
    ‘Mmm, delicious!’ said Rudy, picking up his cue. ‘So lickable!’
    Tasmeen shot Petal a do-you- believe- this-guy? glance. Petal grinned, swallowing her beer. Tas was endlessly critical. She had a bad temper and a non-stop, twenty-four-seven fuck-you attitude. It was one of the things Petal liked best about Tas: she always said what was on her mind, she never sucked up to Petal because Petal’s dad was rock royalty, so famous he was known only by his last name.
    Petal had grown up with film stars and rock legends and real royalty, and though her father had gone all Zen in recent years, she remembered the wild parties in her early teens all too well. She’d seen too many world-famous people trashed and behaving badly to have much respect for anyone any more. When you were ten, watching wide-eyed from your window as a gorgeous female singer, famous for her perfect marriage to a film star and her super-healthy macrobiotic diet, had got drunk on tequila, stripped off her clothes, jumped into the pool naked, hit on a member of a girl group, and then thrown up over herself, it sort of did your head in about believing anything anyone ever told you. She’d heard ‘do as I say, not as I do’ so many times in her childhood it was like her dad’s mantra.
    Until he got Zen Buddhism and a mantra for real, of course.
    ‘You’re a bit of a twat, aren’t you?’ Tas was saying to Rudy, who bridled.
    ‘Don’t let her get to you, Rudy,’ JC said, wrapping his arm round his boyfriend’s narrow waist. They were both fashionably thin, their skinny jeans dropping off their narrow hips. JC, as befitted an up-and-coming hairstylist, had bleached his hair, dipped the ends in pale green, and razored it in a style that, if hanging just right, gave his round friendly face an angularity that it lacked naturally. Mascara and a hit of lip gloss added to the edgy look that he was desperate to cultivate; he would have given anything to have a sullen, bony face rather than the chubby cheeks he couldn’t lose, no matter how much he dieted.
    ‘She’s mean ,’ Rudy sniffed, drinking his beer. Rudy looked like all the other boys JC had dated over the years: super-elegant, with smooth beige skin and big dark eyes with ridiculously thick lashes. He pouted prettily with resentment.
    ‘Oh, she’s a total key merchant,’ JC said. ‘Likes to wind everyone up.’
    ‘I just say what I think,’ Tas said, shrugging.
    She never apologizes, Petal thought. I love that about her.
    Also, Petal loved that Tas was definitely on the curvy side, and it didn’t seem to bother her at all. Petal was so obsessed, so driven to be thin – not too skinny, of course, or the tabloids would say you had an eating disorder. But if you were too skinny, they’d still photograph you; while if you were too fat, you’d get one photo in a ‘Who Ate All The Pies?’ section of a gossip mag, and then they wouldn’t bother with you again. You needed to be able to get into sample sizes for fashion shoots, wear up-and-coming designers’ tiny clothes out partying, so that next day you’d be ‘Petal Gold, rocking Christopher Kane’s stretch neon mini at the launch party for Chanel’s new range of mobile phone charms!’
    It was all about the press coverage. That was the one thing she’d truly learned from her mum and dad. If you didn’t get the column inches, you might as well be dead.
    ‘They’re on!’