Last Summer by Hailey Abbott

Author:Hailey Abbott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

12

The first step was to make sure that what she thought was happening was really happening, Ella told herself. There was no point doing anything until she was sure.

After all, Peter was beautiful and smoldering, and he could lure any unsuspecting girl into his little web. Ella knew this better than anyone. It wasn’t so hard to imagine a scenario in which Taryn accidentally got involved with a hot guy one evening, only to discover later that it was the hot guy who’d treated Kelsi so badly way back when. In this imagined scenario, Ella found she could give Taryn the benefit of the doubt.

But she knew that was only because she didn’t believe it.

Taryn knew exactly who and what Peter was. Ella was certain of that.

And because Ella was certain, she wanted to be extra careful in proving it. Because she could tell that Kelsi wasn’t going to accept the ugly truth about her supposed best friend without a boatload of evidence.

This was how Ella convinced herself that her only option that Friday night was to follow Taryn.

Kelsi had gone down to New York again, a last-minute trip brought on because Bennett had to cancel coming up once again. Ella didn’t think it was too cool that he kept doing that to Kelsi. She happened to be an expert on the long-distance thing, having first failed at it, and then succeeded at it, all during this past year. With the same person, in fact. One thing she knew: You had to make time for the other person or you could forget about it.

But Kelsi’s long-distance relationship wasn’t really what was occupying her thoughts tonight.

She was determined that tonight she’d figure out what was really going on between Taryn and Peter.

Ella lounged around in the living room in her old Juicy sweats, yawning and reading Allure, looking like she planned to spend the night in. She waited until Taryn got the inevitable call on her cell phone. When Taryn started whispering and giggling, and then took the call to the bedroom, Ella moved herself to the sunporch and changed into something more appropriate for going out—in this case, a denim miniskirt, layered tank tops, and ropes of long beads.

It wasn’t that hard to slip out of the cottage and wait in the shadows by the side of the dirt road. By this point in the summer, Ella knew the whole stretch of that road like the contents of her closet. She could walk it with her eyes closed, which was a good thing, as it was usually far too dark to see anything, anyway.

Soon enough, Ella’s eyes adjusted enough so that when Taryn walked past, she could see her—or enough of her, anyway. Ella would know that saucy little walk anywhere, it annoyed her so much. It was easy enough to follow Taryn, keeping to the shadows and trailing her all the way into town. Ella was grateful her cork-soled wedges were silent on the pebbles.

Once in the village, there were other people around and Ella was able to draw closer to her prey.

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