Read Crystal for Free Online Page A

said maybe I wouldn’t,” Pat said. “But I had the time so…”
    “So you figure you’d make me look like a fool!” Crystal said. “Thanks a lot.”
    “Have you seen my grades in History?” Pat asked. “Last year I had straight A’s, and this year I’ll be lucky to pull down a B.”
    “Look, Mrs. Reyes doesn’t like me, and you know it,” Crystal said. “She likes making me look stupid, and you’re helping her.”
    “I think she likes you,” Pat said. “Why would she have anything against you?”
    “You heard that bit about the limo,” Crystal said. “I think she’s jealous, that’s all.”
    “Just because you come to school once in a while in a limo?”
    “And maybe because she’s not very pretty,” Crystal said.“Maybe she figures she’ll show me up. How do I know?”
    “People aren’t like that, Crissie. I mean, just because somebody’s not as pretty as you are, that doesn’t mean they’re out to mess over you.”
    “Then why did you do the homework?”
    “Crissie!”
    Crystal watched as Pat turned sharply and walked down the hallway from her. She and Pat had always been close friends, but there wasn’t any question that Pat did a lot better than Crystal in school. What had the guidance counselor said? That Pat was definitely college material. Crystal had been maintaining a C average before she started modeling and was just barely managing that since she had been working.
    It bothered Crystal to hurt Pat. They had been best friends for a long time, but the modeling seemed to get in the way somehow. There were times when she would be so glad to see Pat, to tell her what she had done during the day, and to talk things over with her. But more often than not she didn’t talk to her about what was really on her mind, and sometimes she would find herself saying things that she knew had hurt her friend.
    Pat had been as excited as Crystal when she found out that Crystal would be modeling. And Pat wasn’t the jealous type, that wasn’t it. It was just that modeling wasn’t like she and Pat had thought it would be. The work was harder, more boring, than she ever thought it could be and made more demands on Crystal than she could handle at times. It was, Crystal felt, almost as if she were jealous of Pat for some reason. But she was pretty and she was making a lot of money doing what she was doing. There wasn’t any needto apologize for that.
    Still, Crystal wished that Pat could be with her some of the time. Maybe when she was waiting for a shoot to begin and heard the clients talking about her. Or when a job was done and everyone was packing up to go home, and no one seemed to care about anything except that the shoes she had been wearing looked good or that the name of the product was centered well in the pictures.
     
     
    At breakfast the next morning, her father was putting too much butter on his toast, as usual, and talking up a blue streak, also as usual.
    “So they want me to go to Chicago and show it to some bigwigs.” Daniel Brown stirred just the top of his coffee as he spoke. “I don’t know, though. Sometimes they get you in them big buildings and try to steal your ideas. They pick your brain and tell you they’ll get back to you. Then the first thing you know they coming out with your idea and talking about how somebody else developed it.”
    “I don’t see what’s so wonderful about these dyes when you didn’t even invent them.” Carol Brown had poured a measured quarter cup of half-and-half into a mixing bowl with two eggs. “I think you’re just frustrated because you’re not a doctor.”
    “Frustrated?” Daniel’s forehead furrowed. “Damn right, I’m frustrated. Anytime you can’t be what you want to be, you’re either frustrated or a fool!”
    “So what’s your idea, Daddy?” Crystal was doing her face-stretching exercises in front of a makeup mirror on the table.
    “Are you in pain or something?”
    “Her facial exercises,” Mrs. Brown said.