Free The Battle of Darcy Lane by Tara Altebrando Page A

cup. I handed them over the door and held my hands over my chest as if she could see through the door. “I need something in between these.”
    â€œI’ll be right back.” A minute later Mom handed another bra over the top. It fit just right.
    â€œThis is the one,” I said when I came out, dressed again and feeling strangely naked under my top.
    â€œOkay.” She was all business. “We’ll get a few more in this same size.”
    Normally, I tried to stay at the mall as long as possible if it meant the possibility of Mom buying things for me, even if it really was just a cinnamon bun. But today I just wanted to get home so I could go to my room, put one of my bras on, and study myself in the mirror. Maybe it was true that I didn’t really need one, but maybe having one would trick my body into changing that.

    I was lying on a float in the pool later in the day, feeling dozy after swimming a bunch of laps, when the phone rang. I braced myself for a hang-up, for it all to start again. But instead Mom called out, “Julia? It’s Peter. He says his mom made cookies and do you want to go over for a while?”
    That pepped me right up. “Sure!”
    I hurried upstairs to change and headed out to Peter’s, my hair still damp.
    He was sitting on the front porch with the iPad resting on his bony knees. “Hope you didn’t have your heart set on cookies.”
    I smiled. “Cookies are overrated.”
    He got up. “Let’s go.”
    He hopped onto his skateboard, and I walked beside him. “Hey, can you teach me to do that—skateboard—sometime?”
    â€œSure. Whenever you want.”
    So we found our spot by the pond and we sat and watched episode two.
    Alyssa had told me the truth, at least. After Mack picked up his dead wife’s phone and there was a man on the other end who said, “Sorry, wrong number,” and hung up, Mack started to suspect an affair. He and Archer went back to their apartment, in a building now surrounded by bodies and uncollected trash, and Mack went through his wife’s things, looking for more proof. Archer was only about six years old, so he went to his room and started to play with Legos, and I got to thinking how nice it would be, to be young enough that when the world was ending, you could still find a way to play with Legos and not just sit around freaking out.
    After that, though, I started to have a hard time concentrating. There was a new story line that followedsome other survivors in another city. A couple of the guys looked the same, and I was having trouble remembering which one was which.
    â€œI’m going head to head against Alyssa in Russia on Saturday,” I said when the show was over and Peter closed the iPad cover.
    â€œWhat? Because you threw the ball at her?”
    â€œI don’t even know.” I stood up to stretch and told him about my mom forcing me to apologize and then me taking it back. “Alyssa said I was mad that I wasn’t good at Russia, so I told her I could beat her.”
    â€œJulia, Julia, Julia.” Peter shook his head.
    â€œWhat?”
    He just shook his head some more.
    â€œIt’s complicated,” I said. I started to think that maybe that was something people just said when they really didn’t want to explain anything for real. Because, sure, Peter knew she’d been “mean” to me, but I didn’t want to tell him all the gory details, like about the prank calls or the fact that Alyssa had made fun of my freckles and flat chest and clothes and bedroom and the fact that I held my nose that one time —or that she hadn’t exactly come out and said it, but how I knew she thought I was ugly and that no boys would ever like me.
    A strong, warm wind blew and the leaves overhead sounded like their own kind of swarm. I looked up andwondered whether bugs were going to start raining from the sky, and shivered at the