Local Girls: A Novel by Caroline Zancan

Author:Caroline Zancan [Zancan, Caroline]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-06-30T04:00:00+00:00

• • •

Max’s small half-plea worked only for so long. Nina tried, she did, but her scheming eventually got the best of her. A few weeks after Halloween, when Max was out of state with his all-male a cappella group from school, we had a rare girls-only sleepover, and she started the conversation we’d all been dreading. Say what you want about Nina—and most things have been said, when the entire population of Florida is taken into account—but she was never cruel, at least not to people she liked, a list of people Max was surely at the top of. She wasn’t trying to torture him. She was still, I’m convinced, trying to win him over on this thing she loved, so that they could share it.

“Okay, guys, it’s time,” she said, sprawled out on her bed, flipping through an old Kiss magazine that was sticky and wrinkled from the number of times we’d all been through it.

“For what?” Lila asked from the floor, where she sat painting her nails a bright red color that made her look even more tan than she was.

“Day school girls aren’t allowed to play clueless,” Nina said. “Your tuition is too high.”

“Dude,” Lindsey warned, as much with her eyes as with the tone of her voice, when she turned from riffling through Nina’s closet, even though she knew every item of clothing in it, along with the location of the stains and faded spots and the holes. Even then she was the good cop.

“Fine, but I know you know what I’m talking about,” Nina said, finally sitting up.

“Are all of us supposed to know, or just her, because I’m lost,” I said.

“It’s Max’s turn. To be pranked. I think he’s gonna keep feeling left out until we get him. I think he’s ready.”

Lila opened her mouth to speak, but Lindsey held up a finger behind Nina’s head, indicating that she’d take this one. Because Lila was always the first to protest on Max’s behalf, Nina was starting to think it was their own private issue, but the truth was, Lindsey and I could’ve used a break by then, too.

“Neen, I don’t think Max is a prank-war kinda guy,” Lindsey said. “I don’t think he gets it.”

“No way, he just doesn’t want to be publicly humiliated. Which is why I’ve come up with a prank we can do at his house. We just have to find a way in.”

“Jesus, Nina!” said Lila, surprising all of us with her anger and flicking little beads of red nail polish on her thigh when she looked up from the job abruptly. “Get a clue. If you fuck up his house, he’s gonna lose it. He’s not going to think it’s funny.”

“No. You’re underestimating him,” said Nina calmly, still flipping magazine pages and not acknowledging Lila’s tantrum. “Baptism by fire. The sooner he gets used to this prank war, the better off everyone will be. What are we gonna do? Not have the prank war anymore?”

“I don’t know . .

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