After third period, Jill and Emma escorted me to our table like they were my bodyguards, again clinging to my arms and leaning all of their measly amount of weight on my torso. Penny looked up at me as we approached, and Jill and Emma started to push me around the table towards en empty set to Cona, who was clueless to my appearance, turned towards and talking to Evan Dante.
I shook Jill and Emma off of me and sat myself down next to Penny.
I really would have preferred to sit next to Cona, even on a day wen Penny hadn't drunkenly mocked my face the night before. But I didn't want to make a big deal out of this, even if everyone else did.
"Hello, Vera," Penny greeted me as I sat down, her tone crisp and formal. "Hi, Penny," I said, and it somehow came out like a question. "I do want to say I'm sorry about last night." The way she emphasized "do" made it sounds as if I had been claiming that she wouldn't apologize, and she was proving me wrong. "You were pretty plastered," I reminded her with a sweet smile, and she smiled back, but her eyes seethed.
She grasped my hand and squeezed, looking out at our friends as Oprah might look out to a live audience while clinging the hands of two newly-reunited divorcees.
"See?" she said, and I rose an eyebrow despite myself. "All made up." She smiled at me, and I smiled as well and squeezed her hand back, "All made up."
Then I withdrew my hand, reaching it out toward Cona, and said, "Cona, give me your water. I left mine in DeMarco's room." Cona handed me her water and I pulled back, untwisting the cap.
Penny met my eye and stared silently for a moment before turning to Evan; intercepting his conversation with Cona.
"Penny doesn't know anything," Cona said as I walked up to my car, where she was waiting next to the passenger seat for a ride home. "You have the prettiest little nose this side of Manhattan." I grinned at her and shook my head, unlocking the car and pulling open my door. We got in and buckled our seatbelts, and then I said, as I looked behind me to back out of my spot, "We don't live in New York."
"That girl," Cona continued, shaking her head as we pulled onto the street, "Even wasted I would never say something like that. Even if it were true."
"Yea, but Cona, you're nice." Cona laughed and pointed a finger at me in agreement before turning on the radio. I glanced at myself in the rearview.
I turned my head slightly as we pulled up to a red light. My nose really was huge. And my ears were pretty big, too.
आप पढ़ रहे हैं
I'm So Vain
किशोर उपन्यासVera King is gorgeous. She knows it, everyone around her knows it, it’s undeniable. But at a school where “beautiful” is an adjective that accurately describes the physics nerds, gorgeous isn’t good enough. Vera would do anything to be as beautiful...
