This Is So Not Happening Read Free

like she was sizing me up for the first time. I was so nervous, both from seeing her and from what I had to tell her, that I practically fell into the plastic chair across from hers. There was an open box of Munchkins on the table, and one glance told me she’d already eaten every last chocolate.
    “Hey,” I said.
    “Hey.”
    I couldn’t even believe she’d finally answered her phone, but I guess dialing her ten times in fifteen minutes was some kind of record. And then, when I’d told her I had serious news, she’d been, in her words, “mildly intrigued.” Of course now that I was here, I wasn’t sure I could tell her, or that I even should tell her. But I needed to talk to someone and even though we hadn’t spoken since our stupid, drunken—on my side, at least—fight the first week of August, Annie was still my best friend. I just wasn’t entirely sure if I was hers.
    I chewed on the inside of my cheek. She picked at her black nail polish. Her look had gotten slightly Gothier since the last time I’d seen her. She’d cut her hair into a straight-banged bob and wore cat-eye eyeliner. Her shirt was black and baggy, but her skirt was baggier, and her legs were covered in holey fishnets. There were about a million colorful bracelets on each of her arms, the ones that had gotten supertrendy over the summer.
    “Nice collection,” I said, nodding at her wrists.
    “I’ve started stealing them from little kids,” she deadpanned. “I think it’s important to teach them, from a very young age, the evils of hoarding.”
    I managed a laugh. “Ah.”
    “So what’s your news?” Annie asked, leaning back in her chair.
    I cleared my throat. “It’s about Jake.”
    Annie blinked, as if surprised. “Trouble in paradise already?”
    “Kind of,” I said, ignoring the twinge of annoyance I felt over her lack of sympathy. She almost sounded amused. I took a deep breath, grabbed a cinnamon Munchkin, and popped the whole thing in my mouth. “He got somebody pregnant.”
    Doughnut clogged my dry throat and I coughed, showering the table with cinnamon. Annie sat up at full alert.
    “I’m sorry. Could you repeat that in dough-free English?” she requested.
    I chewed, then swallowed with a significant amount of discomfort. Kind of felt like a rock going down my throat and lodging itself in my esophagus.
    “He got somebody pregnant,” I said.
    “Holy shit. Is it Chloe?” she asked.
    I felt my face flush with color and tried not to cough. “What? No! Why would you think it was Chloe?”
    The look she gave me clearly said, Don’t insult my intelligence. She knew they’d hung out a lot this summer. She was the first one to tell me, actually. But she hadn’t been sure if they were hooking up. Well. Now we were sure.
    I drew the back of my hand across my dry and cinnamony lips. My tongue was grossly gummy. “You can’t tell anyone.”
    “Omigod, this is huge !” Annie said under her breath. She gripped the edge of the table with both hands. “Chloe Appleby is pregnant? This is the biggest scandal to hit the Cresties since Josh Schwartz’s dad ran off with Connor Shale’s housekeeper!”
    “Shhhhh!” I whispered, glancing warily at the two other patrons and at the middle-aged dudes behind the counter.“Could you please take the glee-factor down a notch? This is my boyfriend we’re talking about, remember?”
    Her face went slack and she released the table. I saw her glance once at her computer, and knew she was itching to log on to Twitter and spill the deets in 140 characters or less, but instead she laced her fingers together in her lap.
    “You’re right. I’m sorry,” she said. Her eyes focused on mine and she did look sympathetic, like it was just sinking in. “Wow. God. Are you okay?”
    “Not exactly,” I replied. The rock-hard Munchkin slid slowly from the base of my throat down through my chest, and I felt it the whole way.
    “What did he say? I mean, were they, like, together for a while