How to Outrun a Crocodile When Your Shoes Are Untied Read Free Page A

Zack was listening by the way her eyes flitted to him every four seconds—such a shark. She swept a lock of blond hair from her eyes. The silver on her earrings twinkled in the light. “I hope there aren’t any bugs in your pants today. Must be hard without Liv around to do your hair for you, huh?” She twirled her hair around her fingertip and eyed my ponytail with fake sympathy.
    Seriously, ever since my idiot brother let slip that I was named after a snake—an anaconda to be precise—I hadn’t heard the end of it. And the whole bug thing—so I accidentally left the house with a pocket full of crickets after feeding some of Daz’s snakes. One time. Four years ago. If it hadn’t been so mortifying, it would have been funny; they started chirping during Mr. Dixon’s grammar lecture, and it sounded exactly like a movie where everybody gets bored. Usually the Sneerers had to face Liv whenever they made fun of me, but now? I am basically target practice.
    â€œHey, Ashley, did you know that some perfumes are made with whale vomit? Maybe you want to go a little easy on the spritzing tomorrow?”
    I so wish I’d said that, but the voice belonged to someone else.
    I swiveled around wide-eyed to see who had the guts to talk back to Ashley. A tall girl in red warm-up pants was half jogging toward us.
    Rebecca!
    I gulped and kept my eyes forward, not wanting to make eye contact. Rebecca was Ashley’s older sister, and being in eighth grade, she was even more popular (and therefore scarier) than anyone our age in seventh. But she did it without being a kraken. Although it was sort of cool to see someone take a dig at Ashley. How could a nice girl like Rebecca be sisters with Ashley?
    â€œWhy don’t you shut up, Becca?” Ashley spat at her sister.
    Rebecca ignored her and smirked at me. My cheeks burned at the attention. “Ignore her. She’s just miffed I beat her time at practice this morning, again . Aren’t you, kiddo ?” Rebecca reached out and punched Ashley playfully on the arm before sauntering away to her friends.
    See? Some people seem to ooze confidence all over the place. Whereas the only thing I oozed was a bit of prickly sweat under my arms when I was nervous. Which was almost all the time.
    I bit my tongue, unable to hide my smile. I guess sometimes the best way to deal with mean ones was to be mean right back? Of course, the thought of saying anything like that to Ashley made me want to lose my breakfast.
    Ashley’s perfectly stained lips pressed thin, and her face shifted to a grim mask of anger. She makes that face a lot, and it always makes me think her skin is going to melt off and reveal a metal robot skull and a flickering, short-circuited eyeball. I could see it.
    She glared at me. “Whatever, geek. Smile all you want, but we’ll see how happy you are in English class,” she said, puffing up her chest. “I just talked to Mrs. Roca, and she said I could switch my talk with yours. So you’ll be talking today, instead of the end of the week,” she cooed. “She mentioned something about you putting it off long enough? You’re welcome. ” Ashley’s eyes were wide with phony innocence.
    My stomach plummeted to the floor. I swear, the devil must take lessons from Ashley. Now what was I going to do?! Two minutes, two minutes…how could I avoid stage fright puking with such short notice?!
    She turned on her heels and stomped away. Her two minions followed but not before Rayna gave me the Look. The Look is the Sneerers’ specialty, where they raise one eyebrow and make you (the target) feel as dumb/ugly/worthless as possible. They’re really good at it. Sometimes it comes with a patented lip curl too.
    As the Sneerers stormed off, Brooke nearly bulldozed straight into Bella, a tiny girl in our grade who always darted to class like a field mouse with her head stuck in a book. Her short,