Blue Is for Nightmares Read Free Page B

somehow, for some reason, even though the blood quakes through my veins just thinking about all these things, I can't remem her how he smelled the sexy, steamy scent that Drea is talking about.
    There's a knock on the door. 'Anybody order room service?"
    It's Amber, our friend from upstairs. I hobble over to the door, my foot still stinging from the glass cut, and let her in.
    "I totally couldn't sleep," she says, pushing past me. 'And then I was walking by, heard you gals chattering away, and I figured I'd join you."
    "Lucky us," Drea says.
    "Oh my god." Amber folds her arms in front. "It's so totally freezing in here."
    "We had an accident." Drea points toward the window. "Bummer." Amber glances at the jersey-patch-up job for about half a second.
    'Amber, it's 4:40 A.M.," I say. "Why are you up?"
    "Hunger. You girls got anything to eat? I'm so starving." She boogie-dances over to Drea's mini-fridge, the pink and green shoes patterned across her woolly pajamas hopping along with her.
    She makes a "yuck" face at the selection inside--tongue slightly curled, sticking out to the side, one eye squinting, the other rolled upward--but then plucks out a granola bar. "So, why are you gals up?"
    "We're up," I begin, "because some weird guy called Drea, but she won't talk about it."
    "Who was it?" Amber asks.
    "Just some guy" Drea says.
    "Come on, Dray, you can do so much better than that," Amber says. "Info please."
    "There is no info. It's just some guy I've been talking to. That's it."

    22
    "So, Chad's history?" Amber asks, winding one of her tiny orange pigtails around a periwinkle-blue nail-polished finger.
    "Never history."
    I reach for my school bag, slumped on the floor beside my bed, and pluck a deck of cards from the side compartment.
    "Oh, Stacey," Amber begins, "tell me you're going to do a love spell. I'm so in. It's been a while, if you know what I mean."
    "Oh, please," Drea says.
    "Have some fun, will you? You're sixteen years old, in the prime of your life, at a coed boarding school with a boy to girl ratio of four to one. Advantage-in, if you know what I mean."
    "For your information, I have lots of fun," Drea says. "I know. I read it on the wall in the boys'
    bathroom." "What were you doing in the boys' bathroom?" I ask. "Writing stuff about myself.
    Gotta let the boys know I'm
    still in circulation."
    "Maybe you'd have more luck if you took out a billboard ad on Route 128," Drea says. "What's it been, like, a year since you had a date?"
    Amber sticks her tongue out at Drea, revealing a mouth- full of granola. "Six months, for your information. Almost as long as you and Chad have been broken up. God, you two were a lifetime ago."
    "Eat your granola," Drea says.
    "Takes more than granola to keep these lips shut," Amber says. "Listen, if you're not doing a love spell, I'm outta here. I've got toes to paint."
    I peer down at her toenails, the pink and blue smiley faces with missing eyes and half-worn-off smiles. She ends up borrowing a bottle of nail polish remover from my desk and then raiding Drea's fridge for a Snickers bar and two cans of Diet Coke before leaving.
    Meanwhile, since I'm pretty sure I won't be getting any more sleep tonight, and since the cards are already shuffled, when Drea asks for a reading, I should, but I don't, refuse.
    We sit cross-legged on my bed, the cards in between us and thick, purple candles lit on both night tables. The rulebook says we aren't supposed to light candles or incense in the dorms, but nobody really pays attention to the rulebook anyway. Plus, Madame Discharge is usually too busy living vicariously through the contestants on Blind Date, blasting from her portable TV in the lobby, to even notice.
    "Cut the deck into three piles," I say, "and make a wish before you make the third pile."
    "Why the purple candles?" she asks.
    "To help give us insight." I look down at my amethyst ring, remembering how I dreamed about it, remembering how my grandmother gave it to me when I was