Live Through This Read Online Free Page A

hug.
    “Me too,” I say, but I’m too busy trying to figure out what’s happening to put any feeling into my words.
    Behind Piper, Ming is chewing her pinky nail and frowning at her lap.
    “What’d I miss?” I ask, trying to ignore the knot in my stomach. “Not the ice cream, I hope.”
    Piper shakes her head. “Not at all. But there’s something we need to talk about first.”
    She leads me to squish onto the couch between her and Ming, grabs the remote from the coffee table, and turns down the music.
    I glance around at Dia, Olivia, Rachel B., Liz, Becca, Megan, Felicia, Rachel S., and Hannah. No one is talking and their expressions give nothing away, but I have a feeling that I know what’s coming.
    “We all heard what Coach Laine said at practice about the Day of Repentance,” Piper says, using her squad-captain voice again. “Now, Coley. Alejandra. We all know you haven’t been getting along. Coach wants you to work it out because your rift is affecting everyone. That’s why I invited you both here tonight.”
    Just like I thought—a surprise intervention. This might end up being my least favorite Piper party ever.
    I put on a big smile. “We won the competition last week, and we’re going to keep winning. So I guess I don’t know what the problem is.”
    “The problem,” Felicia says, sitting up straighter in her chair, “is that I spend more time with this team than I do with anyone, and the nonstop tension is getting so old.”
    Hannah nods from her spot on the floor. “And it isn’t Alejandra’s fault. Maybe if some people were a little more supportive—”
    “Oh, please!” Ming interrupts. “It isn’t like Coley hasn’t been trying to make things better. She even stopped changing in the locker room so that Alejandra can have her space—”
    “More like so that she can keep avoiding Alejandra,” Liz says.
    As someone who has helped smooth over arguments between my teammates many times, I’m so not used to having all this hostility directed at me.
    Piper puts her hand up like a crossing guard. “Stop, please. Don’t make it worse. Let’s all go put together our sundaes so that Coley and Alejandra can talk alone.”
    Everyone gets up slowly to leave the room. Hannah and Liz glare at me as they head to the kitchen. Dia pats my shoulder,while Ming quietly says, “I didn’t have anything to do with this.”
    “I know,” I tell her. Ming would never set me up. Not in the way that Piper obviously would. “Save me some marshmallow sauce, okay?”
    Then it’s just Alejandra and me.
    All I want to do is sprint from the room. There’s nowhere to go, though, and dealing with her is still preferable to sleeping in my own bed tonight. I sink farther into the couch cushions, bracing myself.
    “Just so you know,” Alejandra says, “they sprang it on me, too. Piper told me you weren’t coming.”
    “I figured.”
    She scoots forward in her chair. “But since we’re both here, we should try to talk. Don’t you think?”
    I study the throw pillow next to my elbow, and run my fingers through the beige fringe. “Why?”
    “Because we need to.”
    “Why?”
    “Because it’s important.”
    “Why?”
    I know that I sound like my brother Jacob, but I don’t know how else to respond to her. With anyone else, I might be able to fake my way through this. Not with her, though. Never with her.
    “Because,” she says through her teeth. “Coach wants us to work this out and so does everyone else.”
    I remain silent. I don’t look up.
    Alejandra continues. “What is your problem? We did everything together from the beginning of sixth grade until two months ago. Now you’re acting like the past four years don’t matter, like it’s all just whatever to you.”
    It’s been longer than two months since she got together with the guy we both liked and started ditching me for him all the time—more like five months, actually—but I don’t bother correcting her. “Of course it