Read Put Your Diamonds Up! for Free Online Page B

traffic with one hand on the wheel. “I give you praise, Lord God! Give you all the glory! You woke me up this morning and shined your penlight on me. You showed me the way to salvation... and a new shoe boutique. But right now, my prayer is for Heather. You are so kind and gracious. Please. I beg you. Smack the piss water out of her. Show her the error of her wicked ways. Keep her out of the whore barn so she doesn’t have to scallywag for dollars. Punch the taste of skittles and black beauties out of her ratchet mouth. These things I beg of you . . .”
    I hit a button on the steering wheel and waited for a little testimonial music to play low through the speakers while I journeyed down the boulevard. Stopping at a traffic light, I screamed at the top of my lungs. “Geezus-pleaseus . . . I need to exfoliate! I need a deep cleanse! Messing around with Heather’s ole rancid behind, I don’t even have enough time to stop for an Evian dip in the infinity tub at the spa.”
    I glanced at the digital clock. I only had thirty minutes to get to school before the homeroom bell rang. And I had no time for games. I took my education at Hollywood High very seriously. See, unlike those other Pampered Princesses of Hollywood High—Rich Montgomery; the fifty-foot, beetle-faced London Phillips; and Heather—I’m a straight-A, advanced honor student with perfect attendance. While the rest of those hookeroos spend their time trolling the halls, the cafeteria, the girls’ lounges—and on occasion, the boys’ locker room—I’m the only one at Hollywood High there for my education. Unlike those trampettes, I do all of my prowling during breaks and after school.
    Mmph. Silly tricks.
    See. Bubbles. He-he-he. I mean Rich, with her beautiful chestnut skin and those sparkling brown eyes of hers, was only good for one thing. Lying on her back. That ditch digger had more graveyards in her walk-in closets than a cemetery. Think I’m lying? Mmph. Open up those French doors of hers and see how many skeleton bones—or clinic receipts—fall out. All I’m saying is, she didn’t keep her womb vacant for long before something was moving up in it. He-he-he.
    And that Lorax, London. Not. A. Mumbling. Word! That snake! That lot lizard! That . . . that animal waste! That pile of rotted horse manure! She’d been nothing but problems ever since she got chased out of her Upper East Side New York penthouse and flopped her flippers into Hollywood High. She manipulated Rich. Then turned her against me. My dearest bestie, gone! Snatched away by a bunch of lies spewed out of the gullet of some whiskered mongoose in six-inch platform heels. And I wanted nothing more than to strap that roadkill to a concrete slab and torch her eyeballs out.
    And then there was Heather. Now she wasn’t the dumbest Pop-Tart in the toaster. And her GPA wasn’t the lowest or anything like that. That award went to Rich Montgomery. No, Heather Stank Cummings was really, really smart. But she was broke. And she was too dumb to say no to drugs. She was weak! A nothing! And nobody liked her.
    Except me , of course!
    Yet that flat-back barracuda didn’t even have the decency to be grateful for my generosity. She should have been on her knees bowing down to me. The Goddess of All Things Good to her! But she didn’t! Then she had the nerve to eyeball me with them ole wiggly eyes of hers and act like I owed her more than what I was gracious enough to give her in the first place. Money I gave her. Not loaned her. Gave!
    Mmph. Where they do that at?
    Oh, wait. I knew where. Over on Century, in the Piss Motel where Miss Rank-A-Dank Crack-A-Lot had taken up residence. The gutter. The low-lowlands. Mmph. Lest we forget from whence the trash got dumped. Straight to the bottom!
    But I couldn’t even hate on Heather or say anything mean and nasty about her because I knew it was nothing but pride that kept her