Pretty Wicked by Georgia le Carre

Prologue
    T he girl looked at her own flushed and excited reflection in
the mirror critically. Her hair was curled, she was wearing
eyeshadow, and she was dressed in a beautiful new blue silk dress
with a bow at the waist, but she knew she was no beauty.
    That was for sure.
    Her nose was too big and her mouth too broad
and filled with metal. She was also covered in a layer of puppy
fat, at least that is what her mother had told her. Glasses covered
her best asset: her eyes. They were enormous and made of the
clearest green liquid. Not even a hint of gold or hazel to muddy
their spectacular beauty. The pupils were large, like the eyes of
an innocent child.
    When she heard the roar of a sports car
pulling up in the driveway she froze with sudden terror. The
butterflies in her stomach were going crazy. Trembling with nerves
she ran to the windows, and hidden behind the net curtain looked
down. She nearly peed herself. Holy Mother, he was getting out of
the car with a bunch of flowers!
    ‘ OMG! OMG!’ she shrieked
with excitement. He came. He really, really had come for her. Some
part of her had not believed that he would stand her up.
    Distractedly she took off her glasses and
placed them on a table filled with books. She had many books. They
were safer than people. She moved through her suddenly blurry
bedroom to the door and stood behind it, waiting. The best thing to
do was to let her mother call her. She didn’t want to appear too
eager or too desperate.
    ‘ Sky, Miko’s here,’ her
mother called from the bottom of the stairs.
    Sky opened her door and, sucking her stomach
in, stepped out. As regally as she could she walked slowly down the
stairs. Both Miko and her mother were two blurred figures standing
at the bottom of the stairs waiting for her. When she got to the
second last step her mother’s face came into soft focus. She was
eyeing her daughter worriedly. Ever since Sky’s father had died
last year her mother had changed, becoming frightened and
introverted.
    Shyly Sky turned toward Miko. And… Wow! Just
wow! He was so gorgeous she lost her power of speech. Her poor
teenage brain felt quite overwhelmed in the presence of the most
handsome boy in school. All she could do was gaze up at him as if
he was the hottest, coolest thing in the whole world. He could have
had anyone he wanted and yet he had asked her. She felt a warm glow
at the thought.
    Sky had become infatuated with Miko from the
first moment she had set eyes on him, from afar. Her mother
dismissed it as a girlish crush, but Sky was certain it was love.
She was certain she was deeply and irrevocably in love with him.
She doodled his name on the insides of her homework folders, and
daydreamed about him for hours.
    It was a silly, obsessive, wonderful,
exhilarating fantasy that would have come to nothing, until last
week, when he had suddenly invited her to a party one of his
friends was having. Come to think of it, last week was when a few
other boys who had never noticed her before had also asked her out.
She had looked in the mirror and wondered if she was changing. If
she was somehow becoming more attractive, but the mirror said
NO!
    She stepped off the last step and stood
grinning stupidly up at Miko.
    ‘ Well, you kids better be
off then. Will you bring Sky home by ten p.m., Miko?’ her mother
said.
    ‘ Of course, Mrs. Johnson.’
He turned toward Sky and smiled a heart-shattering smile and she
thought she would melt right there on the spot. I think he likes me. I think he really likes me. It made her heart crash so loudly against her
ribs she was sure he could hear it.
    Outside, he opened the door of his sleek
Cobra, and courteously settled her into it.
    He got in, powered on one of those megawatt
smiles in her direction and started the engine.
    He drove fast and silently. Outside the huge
mansion where the party was being held, he stopped under a large
tree and turned off the engine. She turned toward him.
    ‘ Thank you so much, Miko,
for