Pretty Little Devils Read Free

spent study hall or lunch working on a drawing.
    His birthday was March 16 and he was from Virginia. He had a soft southern accent that made Hazel smile.
    His father was in the navy and his parents had moved to Japan. He had come to Brookhaven to live with his sister and finish out his junior and senior years. Hazel had heard he was really pissed off about having to leave Virginia, but whenever she saw him, his full lips were curled in a faint smile, as if everything secretly amused him.
    He was little reserved and still a little apart from the other guys. He sat at their table and hung with them, but Hazel could tell he wasn’t one of them. Not yet.
    Hazel had tried everything to get him to notice her. She had memorized his schedule and had “just happened” to wander by his classes so many times that one of the boys in his precalculus class had asked her what the homework was. Despite the fact that Hazel sucked at drawing, she’d taken to carrying a sketchbook as well. She hoped if she appeared to be into in art, it might pique his interest. Nothing seemed to have any effect.
    â€œHazel!” Lakshmi shouted over the din, half rising from her chair as the others waited for her to come and sit down. LaToya gazed at her over her soda cup, sucking on a straw.
    Hazel sighed. She just didn’t know how to do it, how to go through with cutting them loose. Putting on a little smile, she made eye contact, walked steadily to the table, and put down her tray.
    They all had on knockoffs of the current fashions: short blazers, white shirts, and light wash jeans. But somehow on them, it looked like trying too hard.
    Hazel had gone preppy, with an oxford shirt, knee-length denim skirt, and black ankle boots. Blue went nicely with her auburn hair, which she’d added a tiny bit of henna to. She had blue eyes, and she knew she wasn’t ugly. But looks weren’t always enough.
    â€œHi,” Lakshmi said, grinning at her as the others made a show of clearing a welcoming place. “Didn’t you see us?”
    â€œOh, I—I…” Hazel stuttered. “I just got distracted for a sec. I thought I heard someone call my name.”
    â€œGuess what!” Lakshmi said. “Breona and Sylvia had a fight in the mall last night. The security guards had to come and pull them off each other. There’s a deep scratch on Breona’s cheek and she’s going to sue Sylvia.”
    Jamie nodded. “She’s going to get plastic surgery. Because of the disfigurement.”
    Hazel’s attention immediately ticked to the cheerleader table, where Breona sat with her new, spiky haircut. Her brown sugar complexion was flawless; her dark almond eyes glittered as she talked with the other cheerleaders, all of them in tight kelly green sweaters and gold cheer skirts that showed off their skinny, muscular bodies. There was a Band-Aid on her cheek. But it hardly covered a plastic-surgery-worthy wound. Lakshmi was good for gossip, but sometimes she tended to overdramatize.
    Not that the Breona-and-Sylvia war needed dramatization. The two queen bees had always hated each other. They were the two most popular girls in school, and the source of their conflict was always Josh.
    The gossip went that last summer things had come to a head. Even though he was officially Sylvia’s boyfriend, Josh had hooked up with Breona two weeks after Sylvia had gone to France with her family. Sylvia came back and Josh pretended everything was fine. But of course Sylvia found out the truth. From what Hazel had heard, Josh was lucky to be alive.
    â€œIt’s all over the school,” Lakshmi gushed as she plucked a couple of french fries off Hazel’s plate. “Everybody’s talking about it.”
    Hazel watched as Lakshmi popped the fries into her mouth and chewed.
    Lakshmi had a skin problem. Hazel had tried to tell her not to eat greasy food, but Lakshmi was very fragile on the subject. She would start