The Edge of Never Read Free

slut—she’ll knock your face off if you ever call her one—but she is any boyfriend’s nympho dream, that’s for sure.
    “Now let me do your makeup,” she says stepping up to the vanity with me.
    “No!”
    Natalie thrusts her hands on her hourglass hips and looks at me wide-eyed, as if she was my mom and I just mouthed-off to her.
    “Do you want it to be painful?” she asks, glaring at me.
    I give in and plop down on the vanity chair.
    “Whatever,” I say, holding up my chin to give her full access to my face, which has just become her blank canvas. “Just no raccoon-eye shit, alright?”
    She cups my chin vigorously in her hand. “Now hush,” she demands, barely breaking a smile and trying to look all serious. “An ar teest ,” she says with a dramatic accent and the flourish of her free hand, “needs quiet to vork! Vut do you think these ees, a Deetroit beautee parlor?”
    By the time she’s finished with me, I look exactly like her. Except for the giant boobs and silky brown hair. My hair is the kind of blonde some girls pay a salon a lot of money to have, and it stops just to the middle of my back. I admit I was lucky in the perfect hair department. Natalie said that my hair would look better if I wore it down and so I did. I had no choice. She was very intimidating….
    And she didn’t make me look like a raccoon, but she didn’t go light on the dark eye shadow, either. “Dark eyes with blonde hair,” she had said as she went about applying the thick, black mascara. “It’s sexy hot.” And apparently my little open-toed sandals just weren’t going to do, because she made me toss them and wear a pair of her pointy heeled boots, which fit snugly over the legs of my skinny jeans.
    “You are one sexy bitch,” she says, looking me up and down.
    “And you owe me big-time for doing this,” I say.
    “Huh? I owe you ?” She cocks her head to the side. “No, honey, I think not. You’ll owe me before this is over with because you’re going to have a great time and will be begging me to take you there more often.”
    I sneer playfully at her with my arms crossed and my hip popped out. “I doubt that,” I say. “But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and hope that I have a good time, at least.”
    “Good,” she says, slipping on her boots. “Now let’s get out of here; Damon’s waiting for us.”
     

2
     
     
     
     
    WE MAKE IT TO THE Underground just as night falls, but not before driving around in Damon’s souped-up truck to various houses. He would pull into the driveway, get out and stay inside no more than three or four minutes and never say a word when he came back out. At least, not about what he went inside for, or who he talked to—the usual stuff that would make these visits normal. But not much about Damon is usual or normal. I love him to death. I’ve known him almost as long as I’ve known Natalie, but I’ve never been able to accept his drug habits. He grows copious amounts of weed in his basement, but he’s not a pothead. In fact, no one but me and a few of his close friends would ever suspect that a hot piece of ass like Damon Winters would be a grower, because most growers look like white trash and often have hairdos that are stuck somewhere between the 70’s and 90’s. Damon is far from looking like white trash—he could be Alex Pettyfer’s younger brother. And Damon says weed just isn’t his thing. No, Damon’s drug of choice is cocaine and he only grows and sells weed to pay for his cocaine habit.
    Natalie pretends that what Damon does is perfectly harmless. She knows that he doesn’t smoke weed and says that weed really isn’t that bad and if other people want to smoke it to chill out and relax, that she sees no harm in Damon helping with that.
    She refuses to believe, however, that cocaine has seen more action from his face than any part of her body has.
    “OK, you’re going to have a good time, right?” Natalie bumps my backseat door shut