Jessica Darling's It List Read online

“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.

  And like its predecessor, IT List 2 left me with more questions than answers.

  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.

  Copyright © 2013 by Megan McCafferty

  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 [email protected]. 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