Read Online The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove by Lauren Kate - Free Book Online

then set him down. A cheer rang out across the party for the green-faced victor. I stood among my senior girls and waited for him to do something lewd enough to shock the crowd. Everyone knew Justin Balmer was no peach when he got trashed.
    “Clear out,” J.B. yelled, stumbling toward the bushes. “I’m gonna puke.”
    “Vile,” my friend Amy Jane Johnson said, offering the senior girls swigs from her grandmother’s old flask. “Keg stands are so bourgeois. Why is J.B. doing that?”
    “That’s not what you said when you made out with Dave Smith right after he did a keg stand last summer,” Jenny Inman teased her, tugging on her uncharacteristically short black shirt.
    “That was different,” Amy Jane said, fanning herself with her mask. “Dave Smith played at Wimbledon. He gets carte blanche.”
    “Encore,” someone hollered at J.B. I looked up to see Baxter and Kate’s silhouettes huddled together on the library balcony. “Boot and rally!” Baxter yelled.
    Amazingly, J.B. answered the call to binge-drinking duty. Disgusted as my friends and I claimed to be, we cheered with just as much enthusiasm when the whole thing started up again.
    After the guys had set J.B. shakily back on his feet, Rex got up on the microphone and clanked a fork to his crystal goblet.
    “Okay, merry makers,” he called. “As master of this party, I decree a skinny-dipping convention. In the pool. ASAP. You’ve got five minutes to get these heinous costumes off.” He gestured at a junior guy’s ripped gold-lamé tank top. “Find a dry place for your feathers, and get these gorgeous bodies in the water.” For emphasis, he grabbed a Bambi’s ass. “Rex’s orders—or get the hell out.”
    Instantly, the whole mood of the party shifted as everyone flowed toward the pool. Seniors staked out lounge chairs for their clothes, while Bambies, who were virgins to Rex’s party rules, squabbled over whether it was dark enough to feel okay about getting naked.
    I felt Mike’s hand take mine. “C’mere,” he whispered.
    “No way, I’m not skinny-dipping,” I said quickly.
    “Yes, I’m aware of your weird inexplicable aversion to skinny-dipping,” he said, pulling me toward the bushes. “That’s not what I had in mind.”
    I grabbed Mike’s hand and smiled at him. He’d totally picked the right time for a private rendezvous in the side yard.
    But when we got there, I was surprised to see J.B. slumped over against a dogwood tree. A cloak of Spanish moss hung down like a curtain separating us from the rest of the party.
    “That second keg stand did him in,” Mike said. He looked worried.
    “So he let loose. What’s the big deal?” I said. “He’s a big boy; he can handle a little bit of—”
    “Alcohol poisoning?” Mike finished.
    I sighed. The pool party had gotten so loud, I could barely hear myself think. If everyone was already skinny-dipping, this soiree was playing out just like any other. If we stayed here, shaking things up might be a lost cause.
    I squatted down in front of J.B. He was pretty catatonic.
    “He probably just needs some air,” I said finally. “Let’s take a drive, just the three of us. Maybe we can bring him back to life.”

CHAPTER Six
    TOIL AND TROUBLE
    “ U gh, he’s total dead weight,” I complained to Mike minutes later as we hauled J.B.’s limp body out to the driveway. “Why’d we park so far away?”
    “I don’t think we planned on this development,” Mike said, looking unconcerned, like his end of the load was about as heavy as a feather boa.
    He was holding J.B. under the armpits, and I had him by the legs. I was staggering under the weight, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying a prime view of how green our patient looked around the gills.
    Mike clicked the unlock button on his Tahoe. It was a good thing we’d brought his car tonight instead of the tiny, slightly used Miada that my mom’s new beau had just bribed her with.
    “Let’s haul him in,” Mike