Read Online Barefoot Girls by Tara McTiernan - Free Book Online Page B

normal?”
    “Very normal!” Amy said, “And it doesn’t mean things aren’t going to work out. In fact, I think it’s a good sign. Look at me and Gus! I was terrified, remember? Remember how I was going to drive to Mexico that night I freaked out? You were all going to have to visit me in my hacienda by the sea from then on. And I would have had to. After all that money my parents spent – they would have disowned me.”
    “Ah, well,” Zooey said, “I had cold feet every time, and we all know how well those marriages worked out.” Thinking about it made her want a drink. It always did. She picked up her Mean Green and sipped it, the salt stinging her tongue, her mouth filling with the lime-laced tequila and shooting a torpedo down to her stomach.
    Keeley finally looked up at them. “I didn’t have cold feet with Ben, and I’m happy as a clam. But I don’t think this is about cold feet. Zo?” Keeley said, looking at Zo, her face soft again, her eyes sparkling. Zo felt warmth spread through her. Every time, it was like the sun coming out from behind the clouds, like the first tender days of spring when everything felt good. And every time, she felt her heart respond, fill and brim over with love for Keeley. God, she loved her.
    “Yes?” Zo said.
    “Would you give me the letter? There was something she said in it.”
    Zo plucked it off of her lap reluctantly, she had wanted to read it one more time, and handed it over.
    Sipping her drink, Keeley quickly scanned the pale blue sheet of stationary. “Here it is. ‘Runs to the core of who I am.’ She really thinks something’s wrong with her. She’s said that to me about us, that she doesn’t have friends like us.”
    Pam laughed and said, “Most everyone envies my friendship with you guys. Actually, my mom always talked about it. She was so majorly jealous.”
    Zo said, “There’s nothing wrong with Hannah. She’s just a loner, that’s all. I understand that completely. That’s me. Well, before you guys hijacked my life.” She smiled at the last.
    “But that’s it,” Keeley said. “No one’s hijacked her life. She always wanted friends, but didn’t, wouldn’t, try to make them. She was always jealous of us. It was unnatural after a while. That’s why I kept her out of our house once she got old enough. Too old, really. I wanted her to go and make friends with the other kids on the island, find her own gang of girlfriends. I thought if she wasn’t latched on to us all the time, it would just happen.”
    Amy sighed deeply, and said, “But it didn’t. The only friend she made was that Mary Ellen dingleberry.”
    “I don’t get it, either,” Pam said, shaking her head and reaching for the bowl of chips. “She’s the sweetest kid ever.”
    “But it’s not about that,” Zo said. “She’s a loner. It’s just who she is.”
    “That would be fine if she was okay with it herself,” Keeley said. “But she’s jealous. She wants in. She never forgave me for kicking her out of our house.”
    “You meant well,” Pam said through a mouthful of tortilla chips and guacamole, shielding her mouth with her hand.
    Zo remembered Hannah as a girl, always looking up at them with bright eyes, hope shining off of her. Her delight when they would grab her up and make her dance and sing with them. It was just like those first summers when the Barefooters were becoming friends, the way that Zo soaked up the other three girls, was buoyed along by their energy and enthusiasm. When Hannah turned moody and difficult at twelve, Zo had blamed it on hormones. But that was the same summer Keeley told Hannah that she was banned from their little clubhouse at the southern tip of the island.
    “I know!” Zo said. “Keeley, Hannah asked for information about our friendship for her next book, right? In her other letter? What about the Barefooter house? Why not give her a key and invite her to go there now? And she could bring Daniel with her!”
    Amy bolted