From Bad to Cursed by Katie Alender Page A

have, but now she sat with the Sunshine Club. They’d moved inside to a table in the center of the cafeteria—not the prime real estate by the window, but creeping closer.
    Certainly not the Janitor’s Table or the Doom Squad’s courtyard exile anymore.
    So we sat like a pair of cordial strangers. We’d never had a disagreement this serious before. Some small part of me kept trying to suggest that maybe he’d overreacted and it wasn’t my fault. But it was shouted down by the rest of me, the part of me that wanted things to go back to normal as soon as possible, even if that meant taking all the blame.
    Because without Carter, I didn’t even have a normal to get back to.

W E WERE EARLY , so Megan parked a few doors down from the enormous, well-manicured Laird house, and we sat in the car with the windows down, listening to the contented sighs of the engine.
    After about fifteen minutes, a group of happy-go-lucky girls, including Kasey, turned the corner, coming from the direction of the school. We watched from the safety of the car, like tourists on safari.
    “Look,” Megan said. “They’re all wearing skirts.”
    “Kasey told my mom they’re more flattering than pants,” I said.
    “Only if it’s the right skirt,” Megan snorted, staring out the window. “But they all do seem to be wearing the right skirts.”
    “They do everything right. Haven’t you noticed?”
    Adrienne, Kasey, and Emily went up the front walk together, all shiny hair and teeth, and disappeared through the door.
    Another girl crossed the street in front of the car. She looked familiar, but it took me a moment to place her.
    “Megan!” I gasped. “Is that Lydia? ”
    For three years, Lydia Small had prided herself on being the gothiest goth ever to stomp through Surrey in her giant steel-toed boots. But this…this was…
    “Impossible,” I whispered.
    She was dressed like Jackie O., and her stringy black hair had been cut and blow-dried in a perfectly turned-under bob. She glanced at us, and I saw that she was fully made up, her eyebrow ring gone, her lips a demure pink.
    “She wasn’t at school today,” Megan said. “I guess we know what she was doing.”
    Lydia flounced over to the car and leaned on the window ledge.
    “Alexis! Megan! Hi!” She ducked down to glance into the backseat. “Where’s Miss Kasey?”
    “Hi,” I said. “Uh…she’s already inside. How’s it going?”
    “Perfectly!” Lydia beamed, peppy as a 1960s soda-pop commercial. “How are you girls?”
    “Super-duper,” I said.
    “No kidding?” Lydia asked. “So. When are you two going to join the Sunshine Club? I’m telling you, you won’t regret it.” She assumed the saintly expression of a beauty pageant contestant talking about world peace. “It has totally changed my life.”
    “Actually…today,” Megan replied. I was looking down at Lydia’s hand. Gone were her many skulls and plastic spiders and other assorted jewelry (a lot of which, I’m sort of embarrassed to say, were purchased on shopping trips with yours truly, back in the day). The only thing on any of her fingers was a single, gleaming gold ring.
    “Lovely!” she cried.
    “Yes,” I said. “Lovely.”
    “Do us a favor?” Megan said. “Don’t tell Kasey you saw us. We want to surprise her.”
    Lydia’s face lit up. “No way! So fun. Of course.”
    She mimicked zipping her lips shut.
    If only that could be a permanent setting.
    Lydia flashed us another smile and bounded away, up the rose-bordered sidewalk toward the house.
    “What…on earth…was that?” I asked.
    “That,” Megan said, “is what the Sunshine Club is all about.”
    We were the last ones inside. Pepper sat in the kitchen, eating a banana and keeping a suspicious eye on the front door. When she saw Megan and me, her jaw dropped. “What are you guys doing here?”
    I shrugged. “We’re going to the meeting.”
    Pepper dropped her peel in the trash. “Megan? Explain?”
    Megan smiled, like