Girls We Love Read Free Page A

wearing a top hat over a kind of gross ponytail asked us if we were there for the Reid affair. I would
so
ride around Central Park in carriages all the time if the drivers weren’t so weird and kind of dirty.
    â€œYes, unfortunately,” Arno said to the ponytail guy.
    â€œWhat?” Patch said. “I thought you were all psyched on this.”
    â€œWell, we’ve all been hired to drive you to the Boat House. So get on in,” the ponytail guy said, ignoring Patch and Arno. Liv and I climbed up first, and then my brother and his friend followed.
    â€œThis is so much fun,” Liv said. I nodded in agreement, but I guess she wasn’t talking to me, because she added, “Patch, isn’t this fun?”
    â€œI guess so,” Patch said. “Actually, I don’t know if I’ve ever been in one of these before.”
    As we rode into the quiet leafiness of the park, we started to overtake another carriage with some other partygoers in it. I knew they were going to the same place, because their carriage was decorated with the same big pink bows as ours was.
    â€œHey,” Arno said, loud enough for them to hear, “don’t we know those kids?”
    There were two boys and a girl in the carriage, and they all turned to look.
    â€œWait a minute,” Liv said, in a voice that was maybe supposed to be quiet but definitely was not. “Flan, isn’t that that guy Jonathan you used to be secretly in love with?”
    Everyone was staring at me, and maybe I would have been embarrassed, except that I was really distracted by this strange thing Jonathanwas doing. Which was that he totally had his arm around some girl with shiny brown hair and a lot of freckles who was smiling idiotically at us like we were all about to be her new best friends.
    I mean, what was that about? And when did Liv become so totally tactless?

everyone has to talk to the new girl, and tonight the new girl’s name is liv
    â€œHey, did I meet you at the Yale Early Action meeting last week?”
    Liv Quayle tossed her long, wavy hair over her shoulder and took a look at the latest guy to approach her. He was tall, with slicked back hair, and he was wearing a blazer and smiling wolfishly. He looked pretty uptown. Most of the guys at the party were pretty uptown.
    â€œI don’t think so,” Liv said, smiling conspiratorially at her crew of new friends, Jonathan, Ava, Arno, and David. Her best friend from elementary school, Flan, was standing with them, too. But Flan was a bit off to one side, looking just slightly piqued. “Especially since I haven’t even started high school,” Liv added, in order to bring home to this guy that he was absolutely no Patch Flood.
    Because that was the guy she was holding out fortonight. And she could wait—she had spent two long years in Montana keeping her love for him, which dated to third grade, a secret. It wasn’t until her last e-mail from good ol’ Flan hinted at how big and popular he’d gotten recently that she realized it was time to come back to New York and make her love for him real. It was perfect timing, because she had finally gotten all hot and popular, too.
    â€œOh,” the uptown guy said, looking a little confused, like he wasn’t sure whether to keep hitting on her or scamper away. “Um, I guess it was nice to meet you then,” he said, and lifted his glass at her before turning around.
    Liv wiggled her fingers in his direction, and mouthed
Buh-bye
at his back as he moved through the topiaries and white balloon sculptures set up throughout the Boat House restaurant. The beamed ceilings over their heads were decorated with strands of Christmas lights arranged in cursive L-shapes, and out the windows they could see a warm summer night descending on the park. Their little group had been enjoying rounds of pink champagne from the trays being circulated by waiters. And Liv was getting increasingly weak-kneed