Pretty Wicked

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Pretty Wicked

Georgia Le Carre

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Copyright © 2014 by Georgia Le Carre

Published at Smashwords by Georgia Le Carre

The right of
Georgia Le Carre to be identified as the Author of the Work has
been asserted by her in accordance with the copyright, designs and
patent act 1988.

All rights
reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be
otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than
that which it is published and without a similar condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters
in this publication are fictitious, any resemblance to real
persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

You can discover
more information about Georgia Le Carre and future releases
here.

https://www.facebook.com/georgia.lecarre

https://twitter.com/georgiaLeCarre

http://www.goodreads.com/GeorgiaLeCarre

~~~~~

Dedicated to Miko Peled, the author of

The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in
Palestine

~~~~~

Contents

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

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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 asking me to this party. I’d never ever imagined you’d ever
even look at me let alone invite me to a party. This is the
happiest day of my life,’ she blurted out suddenly, and blushed at
her own daring.

He frowned and then gazed at her as if
seeing her for the first time. In a daze he lifted his hand,
brushed it against the back of her ear, and pushed her hair to the
side, exposing her long throat.

She shivered and tilted her chin upward and
saw through the canopy of leaves a sky brilliantly full of stars.
She couldn’t see them clearly without her glasses and they seemed
like tiny holes in the black sky through which brilliantly white
light was pouring. She returned her eyes to his face to find that
his eyes had left the smooth curve of her neck and were settled on
her mouth. For a moment she thought he was going to kiss her—his
face even moved toward her, and she worried about all the metal in
her mouth—but then his expression changed. He seemed almost shocked
by something.

‘
You’re beautiful,’ he
whispered softly.

She blushed even more, and he stared at the
color flooding her face, and shook his head as if to clear it. He
turned his face away from her abruptly and stared ahead of him. A
muscle ticked furiously in his jaw. For many seconds he was silent
and she simply stared at him. She had never been out with a boy and
she didn’t know what to do or say.

‘
You know what?’ he said
finally. ‘Let’s not go to this party. Let’s just go to town and get
to know each other better over some burgers and Coke.’

Her face crumpled with disappointment. She
had never been to a party before. Her life had been sheltered. It
was her parents and her books. She had no real friends. They had
only moved here two years ago and she was still treated like a
stranger in this tiny town of five thousand people. ‘You’ve changed
your mind,’ she said dully. ‘You’re ashamed of being seen with me
around your fine friends.’

‘
Of course not,’ he denied
hotly, but a flush of shame slashed across his
cheekbones.

She shook her head sadly. ‘It’s all right,
you don’t have to explain.’

‘
Shit,’ he cursed under
his breath.

‘
I’m sorry,’ she said, and
bowed her head to hide from him.

He turned to her and clutching her face in
both his hands lifted it and forced her to look at him. ‘Don’t be
sorry, Sky. It’s not you,’ he said fiercely.

She brightened at that. ‘All right, we’ll go
into town instead. I’d rather have a burger and a Coke with you
than go to a party, anyway.’ And she smiled tremulously. The truth
was she didn’t mind not going to the party. Burger and Coke with
him would be a dream come true. It was silly of her to have
insisted. It was just her pride that had been hurt. She was not
beautiful. And that was that.

He let go of her and looked down at his
hands for a moment. ‘Fine,’ he said flatly, ‘we’ll go in, but we’re
not staying. Five minutes and we’re out of there.’

She grinned from ear to ear. He did not grin
back. He seemed almost fearful. He opened her car door and held his
hand to help her out of his car. She put her hand in his and felt
the warm power in it.

He dropped her hand but they walked close to
each other. At the door he took a deep breath and looked at her.
She was gazing at him with shining eyes. He opened the door and
they stepped inside.

She had never been to a party in such a fine
house and she looked around her in awe. Sky immediately recognized
some of the girls from school, the vampiric popular crowd who
derived their power by humiliating and ridiculing the lesser
endowed. She didn’t allow herself to think it, but they were the
golden girls who usually hung out with Miko, the ones with the
lithe, cheerleading bodies and flawlessly beautiful faces. One of
them was holding a clipboard and staring at her and looked like she
was about to come in their direction.

Miko grabbed her hand and started to pull
her through the throng of people. One or two people called out to
him, but he waved in their general direction and dragged her even
faster toward the back of the house. In a corridor where the crowd
had thinned a little, he turned around and, still walking quickly
ahead, said, ‘Come on, let’s get a drink.’

She noticed that he seemed tense and
different than he had been in the car.

‘
Come on,’ Miko urged,
when she lagged slightly. They were nearly at the kitchen by
then.

‘
What do you want to
drink?’ he asked, his eyes roaming around them.

‘
Beer,’ she said although
she didn’t really like it.

‘
There is fruit punch if
you prefer,’ he said.

She nodded gratefully.

‘
Stay here and don’t
move,’ he instructed, putting her into a corner where there was no
one, and where no one could see her. She watched him leave her to
get the drinks.

She was standing there, awkward and
uncomfortable, when the blonde with the clipboard came towards her.
Her eyes were glittering with malice.

‘
So who might you be?’ she
asked haughtily. A feat considering she was also chewing
gum.

‘
Sky.’

‘
Sky what?’ she asked
rudely.

‘
Why? Why do you need my
last name?’