Page 48 of Crazy for this Girl

She won’t be a back-up dancer for J-Lo anytime soon because if she was, then I’d have to agree with Cal and say that MTV sucks.

Regardless of her lack of dancing skills, Hallie’s clothes are all designer. She showed me her Birkin bag about six times already and asked me four out of those six if I had one. If she shows it to me again, I’m going to ask to hold it, then toss it promptly in the lake.

Maybe I’ll luck out and she won’t know how to swim.

“You forgot to take the batteries out of that thing,” I mutter to Cal as she replays the song again on his CD player. If I have to hear it one more time after this, I’m going to drown myself.

I’m being for real.

“Better yet, I forgot to snap the CD in half,” he retorts, rolling in his line. “It’s scaring the fish away.”

“Cal, babe,” Hallie coos, suddenly behind us and leaning over his shoulder to get into his face. “You really should frost your tips blonde. You’d look so hot.”

She says the word hot like Paris Hilton would and it makes me turn my head away to keep my gag reflex to myself.

“No, thanks,” he mutters. “I’m not part of a boy band.”

“Neither is Justin Timberlake anymore,” she says, and I hear a wet kiss smack against his skin.

“And neither are his frosted tips,” I add in through my suppressed irritation that she just kissed my best friend near me. “He doesn’t have them anymore.”

Both Cal and Hallie turn their necks to look at me. I can feel their stares burning into the side of my face, before I glance over to find Hallie with eyes so wide it looks like I just shanked her with my fact, and Cal, with a perked brow that I would even know something like that.

He knows I read gossip magazines religiously and Justin is always plastered on those things. C’mon.

“He’d still look cute, though. Right, Lanelle?”

“It’s Laynee,” I correct her for the third time today, the eightieth time from yesterday, and the billionth from the day before. I’m about to give up on it because she stopped apologizing and my petty is beginning to take hold over everything else.

I’m not this person.

I’m not jealous or conniving. I’m not someone who purposely goes out of her way to come at someone, but Hallie is driving me to become a bitch, and I’m not looking to become one either.

I literally can’t do this anymore.

As much as I’d love to have my normal summers with Cal, I can’t when the preppy princess is over here, up his butt and into everything we do. And she doesn’t even like anything we do.

Yesterday, we were going to go on Dad’s rowboat and travel around the lake, but she said she didn’t want to wear a lifejacket and that the sun would give her wrinkles. Later that night, we built a fire to make s’mores. I even gave her some bug spray because I was certain she'd complain about the mosquitoes. She didn’t protest at all about the bugs but the smell of the spray.

Add on that, she sat in Cal’s lap, and I checked in for an early night.

Hallie has been here a week, and I’m trying my hardest to be accepting of her crashing my allotted time with my best friend, but she has to be the most infuriating female I’ve ever met.

However, I think I’m onto her little secret.

When I went to my room last night, I peeked out of my window, keeping the lights off so they couldn’t see me.

Low and behold, she was off his lap, cooking s’mores and laughing like a normal person. She’s intimidated by my friendship with her boyfriend and is turning into an overbearing pain. I left today to go grab some snacks, same thing. The moment I’m within eyesight, she flips the switch.

I should revel in her discomfort about me, but I don’t get to snuggle up to Cal freely like she can.

“Wanna call it a day?” Cal asks me, clearly unhappy with us not being able to catch anything today, and I’m not blaming it on Justin Timberlake but his wannabe backup dancer.

“Yeah,” I reply, pushing up to my feet. “I’m going to go—”

“Let’s go swimming,” Cal voices, sounding like he already knows I’m about to bail. His green eyes latch onto mine, holding me and maybe even silently begging me not to leave him. “It’s hot and we haven’t gotten to go in a few days.”

“I’m—”

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