Free Winter White by Jen Calonita Page B

this is you being nice, I’d hate to be on your bad side.” Mira hiked her messenger bag higher on her shoulder and started to walk away. Izzie could make her so mad sometimes. Usually when she was right.
    “Are we interrupting?” Violet’s hesitant voice came from out of nowhere, startling them. Izzie’s good friends Nicole and Violet had somehow snuck up on them.
    Even though every girl at EP had the same uniform, people had a way of making it their own with accessories. Violet had on those large rubber bracelets that said things like
Bruno Mars
. Nicole’s nails were painted a sparkly pink, and she was wearing several oversize rings. One was a giant horseshoe. Izzie had just traded in her pricey ballet flats for beat-up black Converse sneakers (technically, there was nothing in the EP handbook that said she couldn’t wear them—Mira and her mom just thought they were ugly). Mira stuck with the basics, accenting her ensemble with her favorite plaid headband.
    “No,” Mira said, and smoothed her hair, pushing it behind her right ear. She smiled as if she didn’t have a care in the world. “How are you guys?”
    Violet looked at her warily. She pushed her long, straight dark brown hair away from her face to keep it from blowing in the breeze. “We’re good. Pretty much the same as we were five minutes ago in the Butterflies meeting.”
    “Sorry,” Mira shifted awkwardly. “Force of habit.”
    “Ready to go to the game?” Nicole asked Izzie, bouncing up and down on her heels like an overeager Labrador retriever.
    Izzie looked at Mira hesitantly. “We’re kind of in the middle of something.”
    Violet’s phone started to ring, distracting them. Mira watched as Violet’s face paled. “It’s my mom. She probably found her cashmere sweater I stuffed in the back of my closet. I wore it without asking, and a pen exploded over it.” She winced as the phone kept ringing. “I better walk ahead and meet you guys at the stadium. I don’t want any of you to hear my mom practically reach through the phone and strangle me.”
    “Good luck!” Nicole yelled. She was tall, even taller with her blond hair piled high on her head in a bun, and she towered over Mira. “Want to come to the game with us?”
    Nicole was the second person to ask her in the last five minutes. She looked down at her black ballet flats, the same ones Savannah always wore. It was nice of them to offer, but she felt awkward all the same. These were Izzie’s friends. She couldn’t glom on to them now that she had none of her own. “Thanks, but I’m heading over to the art studio. This abstract painting assignment I have due next Tuesday is kicking my butt.”
    “Is the art studio even open?” Izzie asked, looking around the deserted campus. “I know there is a game going on, but it’s kind of creepy, isn’t it? One minute—”
    Swoosh!
    Mira’s arms were pulled behind her back, and a blindfold was placed over her eyes before she could figure out what was happening. Something told her she wasn’t in danger, so she didn’t fight back. The others apparently didn’t have the same gut feeling. Nicole was screaming, and Izzie was yelling things like “
Get off me, punk!
” Mira could hear Izzie’s fists flying. She felt someone bang into her and fall to the ground.
    “Would one of you tell this one to stop?” a girl complained. Mira didn’t recognize her voice. “You’re not being abducted, sugar! We’re trying to take you to your first cotillion initiation!”
    Cotillion initiation! Yes!
Something to look forward to. She wasn’t expecting it to start today, but maybe the ritual was just what she needed to get her mojo back.
    Nicole stopped fighting at the word
initiation
, but Izzie was still resisting.
    “Oeuf!”
Someone must have just gotten socked in the stomach. “This one thinks she’s a street fighter. Someone help me hold her!”
    “She’s the new Monroe girl,” another girl said. “She probably
is
a street