The Amanda Project: Book One

The Amanda Project: Chapter Thirteen

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"I am telling you, that girl was an F.R.E.A.K., freak!" said Traci, dipping a carrot into Kelli's container of ranch dressing. "She was in my history class, and she was always going, like, How do we know for sure? How do we know for sure? It was soooo annoying. I thought Mrs. Balducci was going to smack her."

"God, can you imagine the article she would have written? 'Schools Return to Capital Punishment.'" Kelli framed an imaginary headline in the air with her hands.

"It's corporal punishment," corrected Heidi, rolling her baby blue eyes. "Capital punishment is the death penalty."

Kelli shrugged. "Whatev," she said. Then she turned to me. "Okay. So, to help you get over the suffering you endured yesterday, I am personally going to do your makeup for Liz's party Saturday night. We. Are. Going. To. Look. Fabulous."

I smiled, but having spent the entire night lying in my bed and waiting for Amanda to call, I was way too tired to speak. I'd texted Amanda twice already since getting the money, but she hadn't gotten back to me. Now my phone was in my pocket on vibrate, but I wasn't exactly expecting it to ring.

"Are you okay?" asked Traci. She put her head on my shoulder and stroked my arm. "Did those freaks hurt poor Callie?"

"Yeah, you're acting really weird," said Heidi, irritated.

"No, I'm fine," I said, not wanting to piss off Heidi. Was this what Mr. Randolph had been talking about yesterday when he'd lectured us on entangling alliances? I made myself sit up straighter. "Really. I'm just sooo tired."

"Hey, Jake. Hey, Lee." Heidi was looking over my shoulder, and her voice was sing-songy, the way it always gets when the guys are around. "Hey, Keith." A second later, Jake, Lee, and Keith appeared at the end of our table. Seeing Keith made me think of the fight with Nia yesterday, and I couldn't look at him.

Lee had on this Abercrombie jacket he wears a lot that looks really good on him and his cheeks were flushed, like maybe they were all just coming in from the fresh air. Sometimes I worried that, with his designer clothes and perfect body, Lee's totally out of my league and it was only a matter of time before he realized it.

"Ladies," said Jake, glancing around and smiling at us. Jake, Keith, and Lee have been friends forever, but while Keith and Lee have always been cute, Jake used to be kind of pudgy and short-I always thought of him more as Keith and Lee's sidekick than anything else. He'd gotten much taller lately, not as tall as Lee, but definitely not a shrimp, and he'd thinned out and gotten contact lenses. Suddenly he was Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome and the rumor about his family being some kind of royalty back in India, where both his parents were born, didn't seem terribly farfetched. Sometimes Heidi joked about helping Jake's family reclaim their throne, and even though he'd explained about a million times that there was no throne, Heidi never completely dropped it. The truth was, if Heidi wanted for there to be a throne, I had the feeling that somehow, there was going to be a throne.

"So are you guys going to Liz's tomorrow?" asked Heidi. It was a rhetorical question. Liz wasn't as popular as the I-Girls but she was pretty cool, and she lived in this huge house about a block away from Heidi's. Every year for her birthday she has a gigantic party, and everybody who's anybody in our grade goes. Even some older kids come because her brother's a year ahead of us, and he usually invites a bunch of his friends.