30 Days of No Gossip (17 page)

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Authors: Stephanie Faris

Tags: #Friendship, #General, #Social Issues, #Girls & Women, #Juvenile Fiction, #Humorous Stories

BOOK: 30 Days of No Gossip
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We’d lost Sarah the minute she and Aiden stopped being so weird and started hanging out together. Now they were inseparable, staring into each other’s eyes and doodling
each other’s names in their notebooks. Kelsey was a little upset about it—and said a few nasty things—but it’s okay, I guess. Kelsey would eventually find a new guy to like and everyone would be happy.

And speaking of liking guys, Vi and Travis were on the verge of something. Vi told everything only to me, with me promising to keep it supersecret, and I absolutely would. I don’t know what happened, but at some point I started seeing that all that gossiping wasn’t making people like me. It was making people listen to me, but that’s it. True friends—friends like Vi and Jessica and Sydney—don’t care
what
you say. They just want to hang out. Plus, surprisingly, once I started focusing on myself, I really did stop worrying about what everyone else was doing.

Still, I wanted to write the
Troy Tattler
. The difference was that now, instead of spreading rumors, I wanted to do something positive. I’d track Vi’s success every step of the way. Let Chelsea and the rest of the haters worry about what
we
were doing for a change. We would have the last laugh after all.

Stephanie Faris
knew she wanted to be an author from a very young age. In fact, her mother often told her to stop reading so much and go outside and play with the other kids. After graduating from Middle Tennessee State University with a Bachelor of Science in broadcast journalism, she somehow found herself working in information technology. But she never stopped writing.
When she isn’t crafting fiction, Stephanie indulges her gadget geek side by writing for online technology sites. Her work is regularly featured on the small business blogs for Intuit and Go Payment, and she is a featured columnist for
SmallBizTechnology.com
. She lives in Nashville with her husband, a sales executive.
ALADDIN © SIMON & SCHUSTER, NEW YORK
Meet the author, watch videos, and get extras at
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authors.simonandschuster.com/Stephanie-Faris

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ALADDIN

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

First Aladdin hardcover edition March 2014

Text copyright © 2014 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Jacket designed by Jessica Handelman

Jacket illustration copyright © 2014 by Annabelle Metayer

Book design by Jessica Handelman

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

ALADDIN is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc., and related logo is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Library of Congress Control Number 2013944077

ISBN 978-1-4424-8282-1 (hc)

ISBN 978-1-4424-8281-4 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-4424-8283-8 (eBook)

Contents

Acknowledgments

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

About Stephanie Faris

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