“I don’t know,” I lied. “I haven’t opened it yet. Duh.” My mother pinched her lips, torn between coming down on me for being rude and kissing up to me to find out what was in the envelope. Curiosity won out.
“Well,” she said with a slightly strained expression, “don’t you want to know what’s inside? Aren’t you going to open it?”
Of course I wanted to know what was inside. Obviously, I was going to open it. I was dying to read the IT List, but I make a point of never looking too eager about anything in front of my parents because they’d instantly get all suspicious that I’m up to something shady. Then they’d start asking ridiculous questions I don’t want to answer that would inevitably put a damper if not a major delay on the very thing I’m excited about. So I had to pretend not to care too much about Bethany’s envelope if I ever hoped to read it in all its wisdom tonight.
“Eh. It’s probably nothing.” I nonchalantly pulled the drawstring on my hoodie. “I’ll open it later.”
My strategy worked. Before long the intrigue of the envelope faded, and the Darling household was restored to its normal state of boringness.
“Have you finished your homework?” Mom asked. “Have you started your homework?” Dad asked.
Woo-hoo! It was the out I’d been waiting for.
“No and no,” I blurted. “Gotta go hit the books!”
I hung a DO NOT DISTURB. HOMEWORK IN PROGRESS sign on my bedroom door. I’m usually a very diligent student. I always get my homework done before I watch TV or gossip with my friends. However, Language Arts and Pre-Algebra were not my priorities just then. After all, I already knew the difference between a preposition and a participle, a matrix and a mode. But could I make it through one more day of lunch-table drama without the IT List? No, only the IT List contained the life-changing advice I really needed to learn if I was going to survive junior high with friends by my side.
Or so I hoped.
Chapter Two
IT List 2
The Guaranteed Guide to Friends,
Foes & Faux Friends
1 BFF < 2 BFFs < 4 BFFs < 8 BFFs < INFINITY BFFs
Have fun with your enemies.
PARTY!!!
When all else fails: CANDY.
There is no I in CLIQUE.
That’s it.
That’s IT?
The document containing the secrets to a lifetime of stress-free friendships was written on the back of a glittery invitation to a slumber party that took place at the house of some girl named Julia almost ten years ago. That might sound strange, but the first IT List had been written in lip liner on the back of a ten-year-old Pineville Junior High CHEER TEAM!!! travel schedule.
As they came to me:
1. How can I have MORE THAN ONE best friend forever, let alone INFINITY best friends forever if—by the very definition of the word best—there can be only ONE that is better than the rest, which is what makes that BFF the BEST?
2. Why would I want to have fun with my enemy? If my enemy is so awesome to be around, why are we enemies? Wouldn’t we be friends?
3. Am I throwing the PARTY!!!? Or am I merely expected to get invited to and attend the PARTY!!!? Is it deeper than that? Like, do I need to go through junior high with a PARTY!!! attitude like the most popular 8th-Grade Hots, who bounce around the halls shouting “WOOOOOOOOOOOT!” even when there doesn’t seem to be anything worth celebrating?
4. Okay. This one makes sense to me. I love candy. I’d never underestimate the peacemaking properties of candy. Candy is good. The problem is, I’ve never seen my sister actually eat anything even vaguely resembling candy, which makes me think that maybe I’ve got this all wrong.
5. But there TOTALLY IS an I in clique. Even when it’s misspelled like “click,” which is how I used to write it in elementary school because that’s what the word clique sounds like. Not “clee-KAY” or “clee-KWAY,” which is how you’d think it would be pronounced with that q-u-e arrangement and everything. And while on the subject of weird foreign spellings, here’s an FYI: Faux rhymes with foe. I found this out the hard way when I once mispronounced faux so it sounded a little too close to another four-letter word, which made my mom threaten to wash my mouth out with soap.
So. Uh. Anyway. Where was I? Oh yeah. My sister had MESSED WITH MY HEAD. Again.
Even worse? I asked for it this time! I can only hope that the path to ultimate me-ness is more straightforward—and less mortifying—with this second IT List than it was with the first!
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five (Bonus!)
A Sneak Peek of Jessica Darling’s It List 2
Copyright
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Excerpt from Jessica Darling’s It List 2 copyright © 2013 by Megan McCafferty
Cover hand-lettering © 2013 by Alison Carmichael
Cover design by Maggie Edkins
Cover © 2013 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Poppy
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
lb-kids.com
Poppy is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company.
The Poppy name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
First ebook edition: September 2013
ISBN 978-0-316-24497-8
E3