Little Divas Read Free Page B

helmets.”
    “Oh,” I said, pretending to know what she meant.
    Rikki put her finger on her cheek and imitated Mary’s voice. “Oh, Archie-pooh is so neat. He doesn’t leave a big bunch of mess for us to clean up. And all he takes is just one napkin to the table. Not like the rest of the team, those slobs.”
    Rikki tried to make her voice sound extra dramatic as she continued mimicking her sister. “And I don’t care about all those other girls because
I’m
going to be different. Archie is gonna have to work like Paul Bunyan to get even a whiff of the perfume behind my ears.” Rikki cracked up laughing.
    “What’s that mean?” I asked.
    She shrugged and rolled her eyes. “Mary said it, so who knows.”
    “Sounds kinda cool,” I said.
    “One day,” Rikki said, “I’m gonna have a car, Cassidy, watch! A convertible. And we’re gonna drive down to the Court. Just me and you. By ourselves.”
    I imagined Rikki being old enough to drive, and I couldn’t help but smile. I pictured us in a convertible, the sun burning highlights into our hair, demanding the red undertones of my skin to appear, the tawny in Rikki’s. I bet we’re going to be so fantastic when we’re sixteen.
    To me, imagining is like watching a movie right before my eyes, only it’s even better because
I
get to make up the way things look. I pictured me and Rikki laughing, pointing at the boys we thought were cute, and the ones we didn’t. Together, we added scenes to our fantasy.
    “We’ll have diamond tennis bracelets.”
    “Yeah. Both of us.”
    “And wear our hair down.”
    “Both of us.”
    “Our nails French manicured.”
    “Fly clothes.”
    “Superfly
sunglasses.”
    “It’ll be just us.”
    “Just me and you.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Nobody else.”
    It felt like the good times, like how we used to sit up all night and talk about
someday.
We hadn’t done that in a while. It felt nice to do it again. Sometimes talking about doing something is more fun than actually doing it.
    Rikki and I used to have so much more fun. We used to do regular stuff, like riding our bikes all day but going nowhere, and really silly things like catching lightning bugs and peeking into our clasped fists to see if they would glow in the dark. Life used to be all about ponytails in the morning and who cares how it looks for the rest of the day. We used to play with Barbies. Now we both carry purses with tiny mirrors and tubes of lip gloss tucked inside. Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only one of us who has noticed these changes, though, because none of it seems to bother Rikki. All she cares about anymore is boys.
    Upstairs was completely still. Aunt Honey and Uncle Lance must have been good and asleep by then. I asked Rikki, “Don’t you think it’s taking Mary a long time?”
    “No,” she said.
    “You’re not nervous? Not even a little?”
    She rolled her eyes. “Please. Why should I be? She’s the one that Daddy’s gonna punish for the rest of her life if she gets caught, not me.”
    “I mean, don’t you just hope that she’s okay?” I said. “It’s getting late.”
    “Well, it’s my parents’ fault if she’s not. Won’t let nobody be a real teenager around here. Shoot. If she is dead, what’re they gonna say to the judge? Because I’m gonna tell him—‘It’s their fault, Your Honor. My parents are too strict!’”
    “You ever think about how Daddy and Uncle Lance are so different?”
    “You mean how Uncle Ray is normal, and my daddy’s not. Duh!”
    “Yeah, but at least Uncle Lance isn’t trying to send you to Clara Ellis,” I reminded her.
    “Well, that’s only because he knows that I’d just run away if he tried.” Rikki hopped off the couch and headed over to the washing machine. She started fumbling around behind it, and I sat up, knowing exactly what she was going over there to do. It was
not
to wash a load of clothes.
    Contraband.
    Rikki had written the word in graffiti letters, with a capital