Faking Perfect Read Online Free

said, not taking my eyes off the paper I was reading, the one from the cable company that claimed our bill was well overdue. Usually she hid this kind of mail from me, knowing I’d nag her about it. I didn’t even have a key to our mailbox. “This payment was due weeks ago. They’re cutting off our cable on Monday.”
    She finally shut up about the latte guy and stared at me, open-mouthed. “The cable?” Panic seeped in as it dawned on her that she’d soon be without The Game Show Network.
    “Yes, the cable.” The paper crackled as my fingers tightened around it. “What else didn’t you pay?”
    She closed her mouth and started gnawing on her bottom lip. “I’m sure I paid the electric bill this month.”
    I took one look at the uncertainty on her face and rushed down the hall to the spare bedroom where we kept the computer. She followed close behind. I brought up online banking and gestured for her to enter her username and password, information she refused to divulge to me no matter how much I begged. “I’m the mother and you’re the child. I pay the bills around here,” she’d say, even though it was only half true. Sometimes she paid them, sometimes she didn’t, and we never knew which one it was until an overdue notice appeared in the mail or, in extreme cases, we lost the cable, phone, lights. We’d lived a few days in complete darkness more than once.
    “Okay,” she said slowly as she looked over her account. “So I didn’t pay it. I will right now, don’t worry.” She sat down in the computer chair and started typing.
    “My God , Mom,” I growled. She was a child. I lived with a bleached, tanned, almost-forty-year-old child. “I set reminders for you on your phone and everything.”
    “Yeah, well . . . “ She shut down the browser and spun around in the chair, her expression a mix of apology and belligerence. “They always get paid eventually, don’t they?”
    “No! That’s the problem.”
    Her face turned pink again. “Get off my back, Lexi,” she shouted. “So a bill gets paid a little late sometimes. Who cares? I’m sick of you constantly nagging at me. Nag, nag, nag. I’m the mother and you’re the—”
    “Right,” I said, cutting her off. “ I’m the child. And that dynamic has always worked so well around here, hasn’t it?”
    She stood up to her full five-foot-one height and glared at me. “And what is that supposed to mean, Lexi Claire?”
    Oh, I knew she was angry when she brought out my full name, the name I used to go by when I was little but shortened to just Lexi when I was twelve. Claire came from my paternal grandmother, a woman I didn’t even remember. I thought of her in the same way I thought of my father—a stranger who was probably dead by now.
    “Nothing, Mother,” I replied with false sweetness. She opened her mouth to yell at me some more but I didn’t give her the chance. I turned and walked out, not stopping until I reached the front door. I yanked it open and stepped out into the cold, forgetting about my jacket. Too pissed to even notice the biting March wind, I tramped across the street to Nolan’s house.
     
    “I’d offer you a shot of vodka,” Nolan said, smoothing his finger over a line in his pencil sketch, “but my parents put a lock on the liquor cabinet last weekend after they figured out that Landon had been into it. He and his friends were sneaking rum and then filling the bottle back up with water.”
    I laughed. We’d done the exact same thing at that age. Nolan’s little brother was fourteen and apparently following in our devious footsteps. “It’s okay,” I said, shivering. I’d been sitting on the couch in the Bruces’ basement family room, cocooned in a fuzzy blanket, for the past twenty minutes. The walk over here had taken forty-five seconds, just enough time to give me a lingering chill.
    “No plans this evening?” Nolan asked, his eyes glued to his sketch pad. “Don’t tell me the Preppy Posse is