Read Online Cecily Von Ziegesar by Cum Laude (v5) - Free Book Online

the rim of her glass. Any minute now she’d hear the roar of a chain saw and heads would begin to fly.
    â€œHey, we should play a drinking game or something,” Tragedy suggested.
    â€œPlease, no,” Adam groaned. Tragedy always had the worst ideas.
    Â 
    T hey played Bullshit with two decks of cards. Tragedy called “bullshit” every hand, which was annoying, but meant that they all got very drunk. Six bottles of wine and a case of beer later, Shipley lay on the living room sofa with her head in Tom’s lap and her feet in Adam’s, watching Tragedy and Nick dance to the Gatzes’ collection of Bee Gees albums. The operatic wails of the brothers Gibb sounded almost futuristic, even though the music had come out almost two decades ago. Eliza knelt on the floor next to the coffee table, staring at the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The Scooby Doo marathon continued to play on the muted TV. Scooby and Shaggy tiptoed around a deserted amusement park, their teeth chattering noiselessly. It was two o’clock in the morning. The sheep would be waiting for their grain at six.
    â€œPlum,” Tom said, gazing down at the side of Shipley’s head. “That’s what color I’d start with if I were going to paint your hair. Everyone thinks blond hair is yellow, but it’s really not.”
    â€œMmm.” Shipley had never been this intoxicated. She’d long given up trying to speak. Way down at the other end of the sofa she could feel Adam’s knuckle brush against her bare foot. She closed her eyes.
    The next song was a slow one. Rather than attempt an awkward promlike slow dance, Tragedy and Nick knelt down beside Eliza to help her with the puzzle.
    â€œIt’s from the Mensa Society,” Tragedy told them. “I joined just for fun. It’s a picture of the first landing on the Moon and it’s got eighteen hundred pieces—eighteen hundred and only four corners. I’ve been doing it for almost a week and I lost the cover of the box with the picture on it so now I’m really screwed.” She grabbed the piece Nick had just picked up. “Hey, gimme that. That’s Neil Armstrong’s thumb.” She pressed the piece into place. “One small step for womankind!”
    Another slow song came on, and even as their bodies continued to participate with what was happening in the room—talking to each other, moving puzzle pieces around, pretending not to fall asleep or stroke a foot or a lock of hair—their minds were elsewhere. Each of them in his or her own way was marveling at how they’d gotten there, to this particular house in Maine, this wee-hour moment together, when at breakfasttime they’d been in their own houses, in their own hometowns, with no inkling of this whatsoever.
    â€œLife is like an hourglass. Consciousness is the sand.” Nick repeated a phrase he’d memorized from a book of Taoist meditations, or maybe it was another one of Laird Castle’s bumper stickers. His mom had been putting away money to send him to college since he was in utero, and here he was, throwing it all away on the very first night. It was only a matter of time before they got caught, and then they’d be in deep shit.
    Eliza weighed her own propensity for violence. In the last twelve hours she’d seen five guys fall under the spell of Shipley’s infuriating white shorts—their neighbors in the dorm, the injured Nick, puke-faced Tom, and now this farm boy. If the serial killer never showed, she would have to murder Shipley herself.
    Tom was having second thoughts. When he’d filled out his preregistration forms, it was all about Economics and Government. But Shipley’s hair was an inspiration. Tomorrow he’d sign up for painting. Even if he sucked, it would probably be an easy A.
    Tragedy had just realized that she did not own a single book about space travel. After she’d visited every destination