Read Toil & Trouble: A Know Not Why Halloween (Mis)adventure for Free Online Page B

the circumstances.) “It’s what you’re doing.
You’re always all: uhhh-uhh—UHHHH —”
     
    Amber looks up from where she’s scribbling notes in a
script on the other side of the room.
     
    What, so a girl can’t just nonchalantly make some
scornful sex noises of mockery without getting everybody’s
attention?
     
    “Because I haven’t acquired the capacity for speech
yet, freak!” Heather cries.
     
    Cora glares at her. “Don’t even worry about it; I
have it on good authority from society that hot naked women are
actually at their best without the capacity for speech. Just
keep doing what you’re doing— I bet the guys in the audience will
be whipping it out at the sight of you—”
     
    Heather grabs her backpack off the counter. It knocks
into Cora’s arm, and the eighth leg of her cheek spider winds up
squiggling all the way to her nose.
     
    “Okay, fine!” Heather spits. “I have tried to be nice
to you, but you’re obviously never going to forgive me for doing
better at auditions than you and earning this role fair and square,
so whatever. Whatever. I give up.”
     
    Cora laughs shortly. “Wow.”
     
    “What?”
     
    “Nothing,” Cora says airily. “You just suck at being
nice, if this has been you being nice.”
     
    “Oh, God! Jealous much?”
     
    “Annoying much?”
     
    “Copying me much?”
     
    “Fuck you, Frankenbitch,” Cora snarls. “How’s that
for original?”
     
    “Actually, technically, you’re Frankenbitch,” Heather
says saccharinely, swooshing right into Cora’s personal space. Cora
can smell her peachy lipgloss. “I’m Frankenbitch’s monster. Learn
the play.”
     
    Cora watches her go, her shiny brown hair swishing
with every step.
     
    Fucking fuckity fuck fuck her.
     
    “Jesus Christ,” Cora mutters. “No wonder Howie
fucking forsook the entire female gender after dating that .
Like I’d let her come to the haunted house. She is the last person
I would ever invite to fucking anything concerning my life
outside of this play.” Amber is staring at her. “What?”
     
    “Nothing,” Amber says. “That was just, I don’t know,
very Elizabeth Bennet of you to say.”
     
    “Did Elizabeth Bennet ever cut a bitch?” Cora asks
sweetly.
     
    “Scholars have argued on the matter,” Amber
replies.
     
    “And I know you did not just call Heather my Mr.
Darcy, because you’re not delusional.”
     
    “At the most, I tastefully implied it.”
     
    “Yeah, well, your Mr. Darcy is Mitch, and it’s
frankly offensive to me that you haven’t ridden that all the way to
Pound Town.”
     
    “We’re platonic friends, and please don’t ever say
Pound Town to me again. That’s horrible.”
     
    “I bet you he literally has a notebook somewhere with
your name and a bunch of hearts scribbled in it.”
     
    “He does not,” Amber says severely, her cheeks
reddening.
     
    Cora cackles.
     
    “Besides,” Amber adds, “if we did ... get together or
whatever—not that I want to!—”
     
    She so wants to.
     
    “—wouldn’t it put Howie in a totally awkward position
to have his two best friends dating? I don’t want to freak him
out.”
     
    “Howie freaks out exponentially less now that he and
Arthur are banging on the regular,” Cora says.
     
    “That’s true, actually,” Amber reflects. “Honestly,
sometimes I kind of want to write Arthur a thank you note, but I
don’t think anyone makes a Thanks For Boinking My Bestie card.”
     
    Cora laughs. “Homemake that shit, girl.”
     
    “Seriously, though,” Amber says, sobering. “I don’t
like Mitch.”
     
    “And I want to marry Heather and raise a thousand
slutty babies with her,” Cora retorts. Then, just to make sure she
really hit the point home: “See, we both said completely untrue
things just then.”
     
    “Sluttiness is a fictitious product of the patriarchy
used to control women through shame and sexual double standards,”
Amber scolds.
     
    “I know.” Cora groans