Read Online Let's Get Lost by Sarra Manning - Free Book Online Page A

representative members of boykind are an emotionally crippled, forty-one-year-old academic who detests the very sight of you and a nine-year-old boy who tries to fart in your face, how the hell was I meant to know how to act around Smith?
    “. . . where did he find her?”
    “And, more to the point, where did she find that hat?”
    I stiffened. There’s nothing like having your choice of headgear dissed to interrupt a perfectly good pity party.
    “I mean, can you say rude? Didn’t say a word—just sat there with a face like a slapped arse. No surprise that she’s a blood relative of Dr. Snark.”
    I had to stifle a giggle at that, hand clapped over my mouth, though really there was nothing funny about having to skulk in a toilet cubicle while two hipster girls tear you into little pieces.
    “I don’t know . . .” I had to strain my ears over the sound of a running tap but I gave it my all. “. . .
    seems too young for Smithy. He has the worst taste in girls.”
    There was a pause, and then they both said in unison, “Chloë!”
    “And there was that girl in the first year . . . What’s her name? The one with that lame tribal tattoo who dropped out, though everyone knows she had to have an abortion.”
    “Plus he’s got a crush on Molly, which is never going to happen, and there were rumors . . .”
    “God, where to begin?”
    There was another silence while I sat there paralyzed with mortification that the boy that I may or may not quite fancy seemed to have a huge amount of relationship debris piled around him.
    “He was a complete slut in the first term. I mean, well, let’s just say I have intimate knowledge of that little mole. . . .”
    “On his arse! Oh, yeah!”
    “So you did , I always wondered.”
    “It was, like, this rite of passage thing. Y’know, blow your entire student loan on alcohol in a fortnight,

    not go to any lectures and shag Smith.”
    “So do you think he’s shagging that sulky girl?”
    “Getting pelvic with Dr. Snark’s daughter? Really doesn’t bear thinking about. Might cheer her up, though. . . .”
    “Maybe she’d even take her hat off and . . .”
    I didn’t get to hear the exciting details about what would happen once I’d taken my hat off because the door shut behind them. I folded my arms and contemplated the almost hole in the knee of my jeans and tried to get Smith out of my head. Eradicate all mental pictures of how he bit down on his squashy bottom lip with his pointy little eyetooth when he was thinking. Or how he made these extravagant gestures with his beautiful, elegant hands and when he touched me—I wondered what it would be like if he touched me in other places. Because really when you stood us side by side, I was way out of his league. I was pretty, kind of, supersmart and popular, and he was just a lanky student with annoying friends, a big nose, and really, really, really beautiful blue eyes.
    Just the thought of him and all the secret things he’d done to other girls under the covers made my head ache. Like, it should be this really complicated Venn diagram and Smith would be this huge circle in the midst of all these other overlapping circles. And my circle would be tiny, unable to be seen by the naked eye, floating untethered at the corner of the page.
    I stumbled back into the club. No way was I going back to Smith and his coterie of hard-faced hangers-on, all speculating about how far he’d got with me. Instead, I liberated a pint of beer that was sitting on the ledge in front of me and pushed my way through the crowd to an isolated corner on the other side of the dance floor.
    The beer was flat and warm, but I chugged it down regardless because it would take me to someplace else. It was a blur after that. Everything hazy around the edges, as I sneaked glasses off tables and drank the contents. Beer, wine, vodka and cranberry juice, even neat whiskey, and it mostly tasted foul. But I liked how it made me feel. As if I was insignificant and