Read Scarlet Wakefield 01 - Kiss Me Kill Me for Free Online

self-conscious giggles at their own cleverness.
    I shrink against the changing-room wall. And not because of their idiot banter—it’s like hearing boys on the bus repeating lines from comedy films that were hilarious on-screen, but crash and burn in the mouths of talentless morons. The talentless morons fall about laughing. Everyone else roll their eyes and turn their iPods up.
    I’m cringing because I know those voices. The first one is Venetia and the second one is Sophia Von und Zu, the German countess with wads of money coming out of her ears. I peek through a tiny chink in the curtains just to confirm it. Yup, there they are. Confidence is a weird power. Horse-faced, big-bummed Venetia is standing there with as much self-assurance as if she owned the shop. And tall, slender, blond Sophia, with smooth china-white skin and enough money to buy the shop here and now, has the droopy shoulders and slumping posture of a rag doll with really low self-esteem.
    “Excuse me,” Venetia says, I presume to the shop assistant, “do you have this in any other colors?”
    “No, I’m afraid not. Just the yellow,” says the shop assistant.
    “Oh, God, how upsetting!” Venetia exclaims, as fervently as if she’d been told that one of her best friends had been taken to hospital.
    “So disappointing!” Sophia chimes in. It’s obvious she thinks that agreeing with everything Venetia says will keep Venetia as her friend. And Sophia is absolutely right.
    And then I nearly jump out of my skin, because the girl who’s helping me pulls lightly at the curtain of my cubicle and says, “How’s it going in there? You need any other sizes?”
    “Uh, no,” I mumble, trying to keep my voice low so Venetia and Sophia won’t recognize it. “I’m fine.”
    “Great,” she says brightly. “I’ll give you some time. You’ve got a lot to get through in there.”
    I certainly do.
    This boutique is like a jewel box. It has pale-blue Ultrasuede walls, shiny emerald floor, chrome-and-silver display racks, a series of minichandeliers trembling with crystal drops hanging from the ceiling, which is painted with a mural of silver clouds on an azure background. The changing room has an Ultrasuede upholstered bench and the curtains are layers of blue and green chiffon. And on the long rail, which I turn to look at now, is hanging a whole row of clothes that the very helpful salesgirl has picked out for me. Clothes in greens and burgundies and pale mauves that, she says, suit my coloring; clothes that, hopefully, cling in all the right places while draping tactfully over the others. Clothes that will make me look as if I belong in a place like this.
    Because if I can look like I belong here, in this gorgeous temple to beauty and fashion, then my odds of looking like I fit in at Nadia’s party are infinitely raised.
    Clearly, my trendy-boutique research (I scoured Teen Vogue, Elle Girl, and a slew of other magazines looking for shops which sounded like places Plum and her crew would go) was very successful. Too successful. I hadn’t bargained on running into members of Plum’s set during the buying process.
    I realize I’m going to have to hide out in the changing room the entire time they’re here. Because if they see me, they’ll know I’m here buying clothes for the party, and then I might as well not go at all, because everyone will laugh at me because I was so freaked out by the invitation that I had to run out to the most expensive boutique in super-chic Notting Hill and shop like a pathetic, desperate, socially insecure maniac, but I have to go, because Dan McAndrew is going to be there, and he said my name suited me—
    Calm down, Scarlett, for God’s sake! You’re hyperventilating, you stupid cow!
    I close my eyes for a moment. Over the hypno-relaxing-trippy music that’s playing, I hear Venetia’s voice. Actually, I could hear Venetia’s voice over zombie death metal cranked up to full blast. She’s got one of those