Read Online Kiss in the Dark by Lauren Henderson - Free Book Online

see what the hell she’s doing. Her head is ducked, but she glares up at me briefly through her shaggy fringe, a tiny shake of her head indicating very clearly that she doesn’t want me to take this any further.
    I’m baffled. Taylor is usually tough as nails. This defeated stance of hers is completely unprecedented. I lower the Tabasco bottle to the table, my next planned salvo dying on my lips, and Plum, who’s used to this kind of verbal fencing and very fast to sense weakness, jumps right in.
    “Ooh, did Taylor give you that necklace?” she asks nastily. “I haven’t seen it before. Was it a love token? How sweet! Shame she couldn’t afford anything better.”
    I haven’t even had a chance to show Taylor Jase’s necklace yet; I just put it on before dinner. It looks lovely, delicate in design, with the blue stone exactly matching my eyes, and I keep touching it in sheer pleasure. That might have been what called Plum’s attention to it. She’s as sharp as a whip.
    “It’s an aquamarine,” I snap, my hand rising up to touch my necklace protectively, and that’s it, that’s the moment I let down my guard and she disarms me and pins me against the wall.
    “Oh, please. Is that what your girlfriend told you? They barely ever cut aquamarines that shape. It’s cubic zirconia, I can tell from here,” Plum says gleefully, slicing her rapier in and twisting it for good measure. “Though really, semiprecious stones, cubic zirconia, who cares? Cheap cheap cheap.”
    Lizzie Livermore, the richest girl at the table, giggles obediently, fiddling with one of her platinum-set solitaire earrings.
    “I mean, these are just glass.” Plum fiddles with the silvered-bead bracelets at her wrists. “Murano glass, of course, hand-blown. I got them in Venice over the holidays. But they’re not pretending to be something else. They’re just glass. I mean, I’m not wearing cubic zirconia and pretending it’s aquamarine!”
    Oh, she’s horrible. I’m trembling with anger. But Plum’s voice went up even further as she delivered the killing blow, and it’s attracted attention she won’t enjoy. Miss Newman, our form teacher, walks across the dining hall, hands clasped behind her back, from the Upper Third table, where she’s probably been making a few little girls cry, just because she can.
    She doesn’t even need to open her mouth to make small girls cry, because Miss Newman is so incredibly hairy that her appearance is intimidating enough in itself. She only has one eyebrow, which is as bushy as a shrubbery, more than a shadow of a matching mustache, and there are thick black wires sprouting from the moles on her chin. The only reason for her not plucking them has to be the terror they provoke in anyone who looks at her.
    “Plum Saybourne, will you please lower your voice?” booms Miss Newman. “You are a young lady, not a hooligan. And”—Miss Newman leans in for a closer look at Plum—“you’re plastered in makeup, my girl. That is absolutely against Wakefield Hall dress regulations. You look like a … nightclub hostess!”
    Sometimes it really is funny how sheltered Wakefield Hall and its teachers are. I mean, that’s obviously Miss Newman’s euphemism for “cheap prostitute,” and it’s so old-fashioned that a lot of the girls start snickering.
    Miss Newman, however, has been one of the head jailers at Wakefield Hall Maximum Security Prison for Young Ladies for countless decades; she’s much too experienced a disciplinarian to even acknowledge the laughing.
    “Go immediately to your room and wipe all that makeup off your face,” she orders Plum. “Then come back here for inspection. I know Sixth Formers are allowed some latitude in their dress, but it is going much too far to daub yourself with makeup like a French bar girl from the docks.”
    “Ooh la la!” I quip, just loud enough for the girls sitting opposite me to hear, and the snickers rise in volume.
    Plum knows I’ve made a joke at her