Read Alpha Dog for Free Online Page A

detail—except for the tanning part. Mom was too terrified of wrinkles and cancer. “Well, you’re wrong! Not that it’s any of your business, but I don’t have a boyfriend,” I said. I was so eager to shoot down her theory, I sounded almost boastful. “I used to, but he dumped me. Just yesterday, in fact . . . On my birthday . . .” My voice died away. Once again my insides felt swollen and bruised.
    “Man, I’m sorry.” Christine’s smug expression dropped from her face. “What a loser.”
    “Yeah,” I said tentatively. I wasn’t sure if she meant Chuck or me.
    For the first time since she arrived, Christine seemed speechless. I decided to take the focus off me and ask her a few questions.
    “What about you? Do you have a boyfriend?”
    “Yeah,” she replied. “We’ve been going out for about a year now. He’s older. Just graduated.”
    She softened as she talked about him, like any other girl who’s crushing majorly over someone—just like I probably used to. She tried to hide it, but it was there. In the glow of her eyes and the unconscious way she smoothed her hair. I felt a stab of envy.
    “Where’d you meet him?” I asked, interested in spite of myself.
    “At a club in San Antonio. He’s in a band.”
    Figures,
I thought, taking a long swig of my drink. She seemed like the clubbing type.
    “Do you play an instrument too?” I asked, wanting to keep the conversation going.
    She shook her head. “I love music, but I’m not good at it. I’m in theater.”
    “You’re
definitely
good at that,” I said. “You had my mom and Mrs. Krantz totally fooled. Me too. I thought you’d be making me say grace anytime I grabbed a potato chip.”
    She started laughing. “It really helps when dealing with adults.”
    “I imagine.”
    Christine sat back in the chair and pushed a few strands of hair out of her face. “Hey, um . . . I know I was kind of bitchy before, but I didn’t mean it. I tend to do that sometimes. I don’t really know why.”
    I shrugged. “It’s okay.”
    “You know what?” she said, lifting her glass toward me. “I think it’s going to work out, you and I living together. Here’s to blowing our parents off and having fun.”
    “To fun,” I echoed.
    We clinked our glasses together and Christine downed the rest of her drink in one gulp.
    “All right,” she said, slamming her glass down on the coffee table. “I call dibs on the biggest closet.”

    I followed her down to her car (a restored candy-apple red Karmann Ghia) and helped her carry the rest of her bags and boxes into the creaky service elevator, onto the landing, and down the hall to her room. Christine took the north bedroom, since it had the bigger closet and was farther away from the noise of the living room. I didn’t really care. My east-facing bedroom had the better view. If I stood in the far left corner of my window and got on the tips of my toes, I could see the top of the UT Tower peeking up over the giant live oak tree across the street.
    Christine asked me to keep her company while she unpacked. Maybe it was the rum, or maybe I was tipsy just being away from Mom, but for some reason, I really liked Christine a lot—even though she’d been kind of mean to me before. Christine was someone who probably never got dumped, and never would. She was far too savvy to ever get blindsided the way I had been. I found myself really wanting her to like me. If nothing else, I figured I could study her over the summer and pick up pointers on how to win Chuck back. Or, more realistically, how to win back my reputation.
    “So what’s with your mom?” Christine asked as she tossed a pair of what could only be described as army boots into the floor of her closet. “Why is she on your ass so much? Do you have a history of holding up liquor stores or something?”
    “You’d think,” I mumbled, staring down at my ragged nails—another one of Mom’s favorite nagging topics. “It’s just that she’s a big