Read Online The Perfectionists by Sara Shepard - Free Book Online

him relentlessly, and then her brother had killed himself.
    The other girls seemed to remember Taylor at the same time. Mackenzie wrapped her chunky knit sweater tighter around her body. “I didn’t mean . . .”
    â€œIn fact, she’s one of the worst of them,” Caitlin went on. “Because she didn’t even care. She didn’t even feel bad.”
    An awkward silence fell. Mackenzie stared miserably down at her hands. Julie glanced from one girl to the next. Ava clicked her pen, again and again.
    Then Parker took a deep breath. “I know it’s kind of sick,” she said, her voice low, “but sometimes I think the judge was right. Some people deserve to be punished.”
    Tears almost formed in Julie’s eyes—it was the first time Parker had spoken in class in ages. But then she glanced around at the shocked faces. Okay, maybe what Parker said was a little harsh, but Julie didn’t want her to recede into her shell again.
    â€œRight?” she piped up. “I mean, I know some people who deserve punishment. Personally, first on my list would be Parker’s dad. The judge let him off too easy.”
    The girls’ muscles stiffened, the way everyone’s always did when Parker’s accident came up. The whole school knew what Parker’s dad had done to her that night—the evidence was all over her face, for starters, plus he’d ended up in jail, which never happened in a place like Beacon.
    They continued talking, mentioning people in their lives who’d wronged them—each of the girls had someone who had hurt them, too—when suddenly Caitlin leaned forward.
    â€œYou know who I’d get rid of?” Her eyes glinted as she looked across the room, toward another group’s table. Nolan Hotchkiss leaned back in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest. He laughed loudly at something, a mocking sneer on his handsome face. “Him,” she said in a dark voice.
    The table went silent again. Admitting that Nolan was a jerk seemed dangerous somehow. If he ever found out, they’d be his next targets.
    â€œNolan is an asshole,” Ava breathed. “He started rumors about me. Awful ones.”
    Mackenzie’s cheeks were blazing red. She stared down at her hands, picking at the edge of her cuticles. “He’s got . . . something he’s been holding over me, too.”
    Julie nodded. She hated Nolan for his role in Parker’s incident. If it hadn’t been for him, maybe none of it would have happened. Parker would still be her old self.
    Ava scratched her pen along the table. “How would you do it? If you were going to kill him, I mean?”
    A light came on behind Caitlin’s eyes. “You know how I’d do it? Oxy. Everyone knows it’s his drug of choice.”
    â€œAnd then he’d be . . . gone ,” Parker said wistfully.
    â€œOr cyanide,” Caitlin had continued. “Just like in the old movies. It’s completely odorless and colorless. Difficult to detect. He’d be dead in minutes.”
    Mackenzie had snickered. “That certainly would do it.”
    â€œFinally.”
    Julie looked up. She and Carson had reached the front of the line, and Carson was pumping beer into a red Solo cup. He handed it to Julie. “Well, cheers, Julie Redding,” he said, touching his cup to hers. “I hope to get to know you better.”
    â€œI hope so, too. . . .” Julie was about to say more when something on the television in the den caught her eye. The chief of police stood at a podium in front of dozens of reporters, his face lit by camera flashes. Across the bottom of the screen, the text read: POLICE HOLD PRESS CONFERENCE ABOUT HOTCHKISS DEATH .
    â€œOh my god,” she said. Without thinking, she left the keg, grabbed the remote off the side table, and turned the volume up.
    More kids drifted over, too. “Cut the music,” Asher