Read Pointe for Free Online Page B

She’s pretty enough, I guess, in a manufactured sort of way. Good highlights and perfectly glossed lips; the kind of girl who’s never in public without full makeup. I wonder if Hosea has seen her without makeup.
    She takes a delicate sip from a bottle of hard cider. “Hi, Phil.”
    â€œYeah, hi, Phil,” echoes Lark. Her eyes are rimmed with so much liner, it looks like someone punched her.
    Phil pauses for a couple of beats to see if they’ll acknowledge me or Sara-Kate. They don’t. Lark whispers something to Ellie and this time they both laugh. Ellie giggles as she tips the bottle back for another drink.
    â€œExcuse us,
ladies,
” Phil says, and damn does he know how to make a polite word sound like something he found in a toilet.
    He holds the heavy front door open for us and closes it firmly behind him.
    We step into the room off the foyer where everyone dumps their coats. It’s the maid’s sitting room, small and plain but comfortable, with a cream-colored suede couch and matching love seat, a bookshelf of hardcover classics, and a sleek television mounted on the far wall. Phil stows our coats in the closet on wooden hangers instead of draping them over the couches like everyone else. “We don’t know where their shit has been,” he mumbles as he hangs his thrifted brown leather jacket.
    â€œYou know, Lark was in my study hall last year and she was really nice to me,” Sara-Kate says, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “She’d always tell me about the big makeup sales.”
    â€œBlame Ellie Harris.” I shrug off my black peacoat and hand it to Phil, who’s waiting, hanger in hand. “Everything she touches turns to bitch.”
    â€œAnd the first round goes to Theo,” Phil says, nodding with an eyebrow raised in appreciation.
    Klein is one of the first people we see as we walk back out to the foyer. He’s standing near the bottom of the spiral staircase with a drink in one hand as he surveys the crowd, practically holding court. Just in case anyone forgets this is his house and all. Phil rolls his eyes.
    â€œI still can’t believe you fucked him,” he says as he tugs at his denim vest with the frayed edges.
    â€œI didn’t.” I give his vest the once-over. It’s actually an old denim jacket with the sleeves cut off, but whatever. “And you’re
friends
with him.”
    â€œWe’re tangential friends.” We step into the living room. Sara-Kate by my side, Phil facing us. “Like, one step beyond acquaintances.”
    Leo Watson squeezes by us in his Wranglers and signature brown Stetson, pauses for a second to make a face at Phil’s black skinny jeans. I don’t think he has much room for judgment, considering he dresses like he works on somebody’s ranch.
    â€œI think the number of times you’ve gotten high with someone directly correlates to your level of friendship,” I say to Phil. “You and Klein are one hit away from buying matching bongs.”
    â€œBullshit.” But he takes off his glasses to wipe them on his shirt and he only does that when he doesn’t know what to say.
    I tilt my head to the side as I look at him. “Three words: winter formal afterparty.”
    Sara-Kate bursts into giggles and I’m next. We’ll use any excuse to bring up what happened.
    Winter formal is
the
dance at our school. Few people take homecoming seriously besides the athletes and student council, and prom is so overhyped that I wonder how it ever meets anyone’s expectations. But winter formal is smack in the middle of the school year, a couple of weeks after we return from break, when everyone is looking for something to beat the post-holiday slump that falls in the dead of winter. Plainly put, it’s the night when the entire school gets dressed up and shitfaced, all under one roof. I’ve been with a date only once, and that was with Klein, my