Read Online Wasted by Nicola Morgan - Free Book Online

narrow their eyes. Charlie puts her hand on Kelly’s shoulder. Jess wonders what’s going on. OK, it’s quite annoying to be accused of being drunk, but there’s more to this than that.
    Then Jack seems to have had enough. “Look, Kelly, you asked for it. Off you go now.”
    â€œYou bastard!” spits Kelly. “I said I’d get you back. And then I thought I’d forgive you, be big about it, you know? But if you’ve told your new girlfriend, then you can forget it. And it looks like she’s not the only one you blabbed to. Can’t keep your trousers on
or
your mouth shut, obviously.”
    Tommy pretends to have died. Ella covers her eyes. Chris looks at Jess and makes a face which says something like,
Now it’s war and although it was technically your fault, you couldn’t have known
.
    Jack starts to get up, but Kelly and her cronies have gone. They march on their long, long legs over to the other side of the bar, where they join some boys who seem to know them and who buy them more drinks. Soon, they will leave, after a hurried and furious conversation, but Jess and Jack and the others will not notice. Or would not think anything of it if they did. Though they should. They should be very careful from now on. And they will need all the luck that Jack believes surrounds him.
    â€œOK, so what was that about?” says Jess. Ella pours them all another drink from the pitcher.
    The noise in the bar is rising and something’s turning ugly over the other side of the room. Someone has spilt a drink and someone else thinks it was deliberate. One of the bar staff is calming the situation with some practised jokery. It’s the sort of argument which could go either way, flare or fade.
    It’s not even worth thinking about, because Jess wants to hear the story of Jack and Kelly, which sounds somewhat more interesting.

CHAPTER 11
KELLY, JACK AND SERIOUS COMPLICATIONS
    JACK twists his head to look at Jess and tell the story directly to her. “Something happened, couple of months ago. We’d all been out – Ella’s birthday – and we ended up at a party in someone’s house. Kelly was there. She was pretty pissed.”
    â€œFor a change,” says Ella.
    â€œHey, does anyone want anything else to drink? I know this story,” says Tommy.
    â€œYeah, thanks – orange juice please,” says Jack.
    â€œMe too,” says Jess.
    â€œAnyway, without going into the sordid details,” continues Jack once Tommy has squeezed past them, “Kelly started chatting me up and, as you can imagine, it was extremely blatant and yes, I know she’s pretty and all that but frankly I’d rather be kissed by an eel. Anyway, I knocked her back. I don’t think it had ever happened to her before.”
    â€œYou should have seen her,” says Ella. “Totally flipped.”
    Jess is thinking that Jack really
does
seem not to be under Kelly’s spell. She likes this story more and more.
    Jack continues: “I didn’t think any more about her until I was cycling home after the party was over. I heard this noise in someone’s garden. It was Kelly, lying on the ground, virtually unconscious, and throwing up. Charlie was with her and frankly she wasn’t much better but she was at least conscious. I said we had to get help. Charlie tried to stop me but what could I do? I seriously thought Kelly could choke on her own vomit.”
    This is not a pleasant image.
    â€œSo I went back to where the party was and I had to get hold of the parents, who were next door keeping out of the way and not best pleased to have to be involved. And to cut a long story short, they called Kelly’s parents and she ended up in hospital for the night. Then I think she was grounded for ages – oh, and she had to go and apologize to the people whose garden she’d thrown up all over. She’d puked on a gnome and the