The Secret Society of the Pink Crystal Ball Read Free Page B

interested in him is because he has absolutely no interest in her. In fact, he totally hates her. Ever since he got his license last year, his mom has been forcing him to drive Samantha to school every day, because Samantha’s mom doesn’t want to have to get up at the crack of dawn to drive her own daughter herself. (Or, as Samantha would say, she needs to get her ugly sleep.)
    The thing is, Aiden lives two blocks from school and Samantha lives in this fancy, gated neighborhood that’s, like, fifteen minutes in the other direction. So Aiden has to get up extra early in order to pick up Samantha and make it back by 7:30 a.m. It’s a completely ridiculous arrangement; there are tons of other kids who live closer to Samantha, not to mention tons of boys who would gladly drive three hours every morning for the chance to sit in a car with her for twenty minutes. But Aiden’s mom is a social climber, and she desperately wants to join the snotty, exclusive country club that Samantha’s parents belong to. So Samantha got her mom to promise Aiden’s mom that if Aiden would drive Samantha to school every day, she would put in a good word with the membership committee.
    Meanwhile, Samantha turned sixteen three months ago. But she keeps failing her driving test on purpose just so that she can continue to get rides with Aiden. Which only makes Aiden hate her that much more.
    Personally, I don’t see what the big deal is about him. He always looks like he just rolled out of bed, even when he’s trying not to look rumpled. And he’s got to be dumb because there’s no way that even a remotely smart person could tolerate his girlfriend, the aforementioned “fleabag slut,” for more than five minutes. Her name is Trance Jacobs. (Yes, really. Trance. And this just occurred to me: Maybe she should get a job at Ye Olde Metaphysical Shoppe?) I tutored her in math last year. The girl just could not understand the concept of a fraction unless I put it in terms of sale prices at Wet Seal. “You should get a voodoo doll of Trance,” Lindsay suggests. “Or else a love potion! If you can get three drops of Aiden’s sweat, you can do the one that activates his pheromones. Veronica swears that after any guy has drunk her famous love potion, he will never look at another girl ever again.”

Three
    The phone rings before Lindsay has a chance to slay us with another one of her Veronica-isms, and I lunge for it.
    â€œHello?” I say into the receiver.
    â€œIs this Erin?” asks an unfamiliar woman’s voice on the other end.
    â€œYes. Who is this?”
    â€œI’m a friend of your aunt Kate’s,” the stranger informs me. “Could I please speak to your mother?”
    My aunt Kate . Now there’s a name I don’t hear very often. Aunt Kate is my mom’s younger sister, and they have what my mom describes as “a complicated relationship.” Complicated as in they haven’t spoken to each other in over a year.
    According to my parents, when I was a baby I couldn’t say the word Kate, so I called her Kiki instead, and that’s what I’ve called her ever since. Even today, I would never refer to her as my aunt Kate. She will always be Kiki. Although my dad calls her my aunt Kooky, because she’s always doing weird things like running off to live in an ashram or becoming a vegan or joining a Native American tribe and changing her name to She Who Communes with Water.
    Still, she’s fun to hang out with. Or at least, she used to be, back when she and my mom were still on speaking terms. In the summers, I used to go to her house in the afternoons, and we’d spend hours on the porch, working on the New York Times crossword puzzle together. She’s the one who taught me how to do them in the first place. She used to say that I’m a lot like her, even though everyone else says that I’m exactly like my mom. Smart.