Read Online The Clique by Lisi Harrison - Free Book Online

heavily painted girls looked like someone on the Psychic Friends Network did their makeup. And another group was so thin, they looked like the lipstick-covered straws that floated inside their diet Coke cans. Three girls, who Claire assumed were wrestlers because their necks and shoulders touched, pounded cartons of milk by the table next to the bathroom. She considered taking their picture and calling it “Got Friends?” but she was hardly one to talk.
    A white flash of light that came from one, of the middle tables suddenly caught her attention. It was followed by loud bursts of laughter that filled the café. Claire made these girls her target. She watched as everyone tried to distance themselves from the hysterics by pulling their chairs in closer to their tables or by walking away before they had finished eating. Claire thought about going over to these laughing girls and trying to sit with them. Would this be a good move, politically? Maybe not. But at least she’d finally have a little fun.
    Claire reached in the cell phone pocket of her backpack (which held makeup and gum because a phone was out of the question until she turned sixteen) and pulled out her grape-scented lip gloss. She applied two coats and then dipped the wand back in its tube.
    “Excuse me.” Claire was standing behind two of the girls and facing another. “Is that a PowerShot S100 digital Elph?”
    Three faces turned toward Claire at the exact same time. They were still smiling from whatever had happened before Claire interrupted them.
    “Yeah, I just got it for my birthday,” the photographer said. Her hair was separated into seven braids. She wore faded jeans with suspenders and a pink tank top.
    “That’s so funny, I have the exact same one.” Claire searched through her bag, looking for the proof. “I take it everywhere.” She held the tiny silver camera in the palm of her hand as if it were a baby bird.
    The other girls at the table had rhinestone tattoos on their upper arms. One had a blue butterfly and the other a pink heart.
    “Are those real?” Claire pointed to the rhinestones and smiled. She wanted the girls to know she was joking. But it didn’t work.
    “No,” the girl with the butterfly said. “We got them from the drugstore for like a buck twenty.”
    “Oh, well, around here you never know,” Claire said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if those Picassos on the wall were real.” She pointed to the paintings that hung inside glass cases around the room.
    “They are,” said the girl with the pink heart.
    The girl with the butterfly wore red cords and a T-shirt with the devil on it that said, D ADDY’S L ITTLE G IRL . The one with the heart was dressed in blue-and-white-striped jeans, like the kind train conductors wear, and a black I ♥ CARBS T-shirt. They both had yellow, green, and orange streaks, which Claire knew was hair mascara, because a lot of the girls in her old school had been into it.
    Claire could feel Massie’s eyes on her from all the way across the room. She did her best to ignore the icy glares and tried to look like she was making friends.
    “What were you guys laughing about?” Claire asked.
    The girl looked at her friends to see if they thought if was safe before she continued.
    “Do you have Vincent for art?” she asked.
    “Yeah.”
    “Well, we’re taking pictures of ourselves acting out his different expressions,” the girl said. She pushed a button on the back of the camera and shuttled through the images she had already shot. She held the camera out in front of Claire so she could see the screen from the other side of the table. “Here’s Meena acting out ‘you’re tardy!’ and this is one of Heather ‘in love with a vase of flowers.’”
    Claire started laughing.
    “Do you want to try?” the girl asked. “Okay, show me
lost
.”
    Claire put what was left of her fingernails in her mouth and forced the corners of her lips toward her chin. This made the veins on her neck stick