Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 37885 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 189(@200wpm)___ 152(@250wpm)___ 126(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 37885 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 189(@200wpm)___ 152(@250wpm)___ 126(@300wpm)
Reagan rolls her eyes, inspecting her manicure as Cindy nods, snapping her perfect Angelina Jolie lips together.
“Yes. Taking my grad present on an inaugural adventure. Just me, the open road and 650 horsepower. My dad guilt buys me anything since mom ran off to France with her girlfriend. What did your dad buy you for graduation?” She purses her lips, the silence making me squirm as she waits, but she wouldn’t really be interested even if I had an answer. Her dad is Harson Hilton, a Fortune 500 mogul and a complete push-over for his daughter. “Have to meet him for some,” She flutters her hand toward the picture-perfect blue sky, “business thing. He likes the happy daughter by my side image. All American perfect family.” I don’t miss the little crack in her façade as she finishes. “Anyway, yes, New York here I come.”
I pin my eyes on the car, then back on Cindy.
This is that thing dropping from the sky, Mina. You gotta grab it when it swings by…
“You guys want to come over tonight?” I blurt out before my brain stomps on the brakes.
Five sets of eyes flash my way. Various expressions of surprise and humor decorating their freakishly perfect Abercrombie faces.
“Party at Mina’s?” Tucker, who’s always poking at his phone, pipes up. “I’m down. Nothing like breaking in a new house to start the summer. Maybe a mid-night swim Mina?” He chuckles, elbowing Jeremy, who is another of the summer group of kids who laughs and my face flames.
They know I hate the water. Three summers ago, Tucker’s family invited my family out on their fifty-foot yacht and I had an utter panic attack breakdown when my parents tried to pull me out of the car at the Marina.
The summer kids have never been overly cruel or bullying to me, but I know I somehow don’t make the cut to be in the inner circle. That never bothered me. I’m sort of my own circle. I still have conversations with Theo, my first teddy bear, and a backup crew of couture-dressed Barbies.
But maybe, maybe, this time I can play it cool enough and brave enough to ask if I can hitch a ride to the Big Apple and secretly make my dream of being a fashion designer come true.
“Party at Mina’s,” Cindy repeats with that lip biting thing again which makes me uneasy. But this is new territory for me so knowing what the secret cool-girl-code is for ‘lip biting’ isn’t expected. “Let’s say, 10 o’clock? You aren’t in bed by then are you?”
Snorts and low chuckles filter from the group as I stiffen and Dutton takes a few steps my way as if to say, ‘You okay?’. I wave him off, then grit my teeth and light this candle. I’m eighteen now. An adult. Time to take the reins of my life.
“I’ll be there.” I re-mark with an attempt at the lip-biting, stepping backward and into a little kid with pink ice cream dripping down his face as his mother shoots me a dirty look. “Sorry.” I mutter, then end on a stumble toward Dutton with my stomach feeling as though it’s full of rocks.
CHAPTER 2
Mina
This was the worst idea of the worst ideas I’ve ever had.
Liquor bottles and little open packages of gummy whatevers that are not for children are strewn across the kitchen counter. The scent of pot drifts in from the front porch where some of the partygoers I don’t know are smoking after I found the courage to tell them there was no smoking inside.
They looked at me like I was speaking Latin, but I felt Jackson with me somehow and stood my ground. I have no emotional attachment to this house, but I do care that my mom and Allen would have a gigantic-chunky-fat-fit if anyone smoked inside.
I would be having a heart attack right now if marijuana wasn’t legal in Michigan, but alcohol is not legal until you’re twenty-one so there are laws being broken here and my head is pounding and I’m pretty sure I’m close to Afib.
Things were okay when Cindy and the others summer crowd showed up at first. But, twenty minutes later, three other cars pulled up and now the house is filled with a throng of strangers. My panic is at DEFCON five and I’m struggling to breathe as I chastise myself for thinking I could handle this.
“Tequila?” A random blonde in a bandeau-strap Michel Kors last season micro-mini dress shoves a bottle toward my face. “You look like you need a drink.”
“I’m good.” I wave her off pinching the bridge of my nose as a roar of laughter echoes from down the hall and I re-consider the blonde’s offer. I need some sort of courage to ask Cindy for that ride to New York and I can’t seem to muster it on my own.