Read Online carefully everywhere descending by L.B. Bedford - Free Book Online Page B

little while ago.”
    I chuckle, watery.
    â€œHe needs the sleep,” she says. “He wouldn’t stop watching TV, even when nothing was on but the news about that awful state senator.”
    I don’t know what news this is, but at the moment, I also don’t care.
    â€œWhat do I do, Mom?” I ask, bracing my head in my hands, elbows on my knees. “Now I have to see her every day, and I don’t know how to… turn this feeling off.”
    â€œJust keep on being you,” she says, brushing back my hair. “Be friendly to her, but don’t hang too much on your interactions. Focus on the other things that make you happy.”
    I don’t feel very happy about anything at the moment, but I hug her again and offer to set the table. It’s not often that we have a home-cooked meal, even if it just consists of canned soup and chicken poured into a dish and baked, so I try not to drag everyone down with my bad mood. It doesn’t seem to have worked, because as I escape to my room, I hear a groggy Sam ask, “What’s up with her?”
    The next couple of days, I don’t see Scarlett very often, even in the classes we share. I don’t know if this is by chance, or her design, and I fret that it may be that she’s avoiding me.
    This is awful. Is this the feeling I always hear other girls my age go on and on about when they talk about boys? Why would anyone want this?
    At her house Wednesday evening, Amber gently pressures me into telling her why I’m so glum. I spill the whole story, though less damply than I had with my mom. A huge grin crosses her face when I’m done, which strikes me as an inappropriate response to my pain.
    â€œI knew it,” she says. “I knew it.”
    â€œOh, no you didn’t,” I say crankily. “I barely knew myself.”
    â€œYou know how I knew?” she asks, ignoring me. “She made you laugh. And do you know the full list of people who make you laugh?” She holds up one finger. “Sam.” Then she holds up another finger. “Scarlett West.” She drops her hand. “Not even I can, really. That’s when I knew she had a hold on you.”
    â€œTerrific. She’s got a hold on me, and on Carolina Murphy as well.”
    I had been familiar with Carolina before, but vaguely. I could recognize her by face (she was a beautiful redhead with wide hazel eyes), and I’d had a few insignificant encounters with her. But after I learned that she was dating Scarlett, I started paying her more attention.
    To my disgruntlement, she seems like a perfectly nice girl. Still, I can’t help but feel a prickle of jealousy now when I see her, and a small part of my brain examines her for comparison to me. (She is a stylish dresser. She has movie-star perfect teeth. I have more brains.) It was one of her friends that Scarlett had laughed with the night I picked up pizza, and now I was dying to know what she had said. Or the friend had said. Would Scarlett have remembered if I had asked her?
    Amber looks at me sympathetically.
    â€œYou never know how these things will end up,” she says. She’s always been an optimist. She suggests we watch funny Internet videos to take my mind off things and pulls up a browser at my consent. After a handful of videos, she drives me home.
    I’m walking through the hall on my way to Spanish the next day when Mr. Welsh flags me down.
    â€œHow are you, Anderson?” he asks. He’s a goateed, heavy black man shaped like a ball, and I’ve always gotten along well with him. He agreed last year to be my reference if a job somewhere opened up.
    I reply that I’m fine and don’t add that my heart currently feels like a black hole, though I think he’d appreciate the poetry of such a statement.
    â€œWest said you helped her revise those papers of hers,” he says, and my heart jumps a little at Scarlett’s