Read Online Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner - Free Book Online Page B

that his nose was almost brushing her cheek.
    “I hate when she does this,” Val whispered. She’d scratched her arm so hard it was bleeding. I took a napkin from the dispenser on the counter and handed it over.
    “Does what?” I wasn’t sure what was happening. Mrs. Adler laughed, a high, glittery sound. One finger toyed with her gold necklace. The boy behind the counter said something.
    Mrs. Adler shook her head.
    “She is trying,” Valerie said coldly, “to get that boy to give us free lobsters.”
    My eyes went to the menu posted above the counter. Lobsters were $8.99 a pound. “I have some money,” I said, pul ing out the twelve dol ars that were al that was left of the money my mother had given me (I’d paid at Burger King and for some of the tol s), plus the eight dol ars and change I’d col ected from my piggy bank. “Maybe we could get two pounds of lobsters?”
    She shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way. You have to pay for the whole lobster, even the parts you don’t eat.”
    I looked at the lobsters scuttling around the bottom of the big green tank next to the cash registers. Their shel s were greenish black; their claws were rubber-banded shut. I couldn’t imagine eating one. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ve got a bunch more sandwiches. They’re squished, but they’re stil okay. We don’t need lobster…” I looked at the menu.
    “We could get hot dogs or fried clams…” But even as I was saying it, the boy behind the counter was setting two trays loaded with food in front of Mrs. Adler, who was making a show of searching her purse, then her pockets. She turned to Val. “Honey, have you seen my wal et?”
    Val shook her head wordlessly. Her face was tight. I sucked in my breath. Mrs. Adler reached across the counter and put her hand on the boy’s forearm. Valerie got to her feet.
    “Get ready.”
    “Is there a problem here?”
    A man from farther down in the line stepped up to the counter. He wore a khaki uniform, pants and a matching shirt, with a dark-brown belt and a patch sewn on his chest. Mrs. Adler turned and gave him a dazzling smile, her hands clasped behind dazzling smile, her hands clasped behind her back, like a shy little girl. “I was just tel ing this nice young man that I seem to have misplaced my wal et, and I’ve got two hungry girls here. We came al the way from Chicago. I promised them lobster, and I hate to disappoint them.”
    Valerie snorted. “Maybe I could cal my parents,” I whispered as Mrs. Adler kept talking to the man. Val shook her head. The man in the uniform was laughing at something Valerie’s mother had said.
    “Excuse me. Can we get some service, please?” one of the women in line behind them cal ed. She had a toddler on her hip and another little boy tugging at the hem of her shirt. And then, miracle of miracles, the man in the uniform pul ed out some bil s folded into a silver money clip and handed a few of them to the boy behind the counter.
    “Al ow me,” he said.
    Mrs. Adler beamed at him, patting her hands together in delighted applause.
    “Thank you,” she said. Beside me, I felt Val’s body uncoil, heard her breath gusting out as she exhaled.
    Chris Jeffries, the shel fish constable—for that was what he was, not a policeman, as I’d first thought—had paid for a feast. There was corn on the cob and clam chowder and red plastic net bags fil ed with gray clams that Val and her mother cal ed steamers. There was coleslaw and French fries and a tangled mound of thin, crispy onion rings, tal wax paper cups brimming with ice and soda, and little plastic dishes fil ed with melted butter. A dozen oysters lol ed slick in their shel s on a bed of crushed ice, and two giant lobsters sprawled over oval-shaped plates, leaking steaming pale-pink water. I watched as Mrs. Adler opened a plastic bag of oyster crackers and sprinkled them into her soup.
    “Mmm,” she sighed, swirling her spoon in the thick, creamy broth. She took a