Read Online Devoted by Jennifer Mathieu - Free Book Online Page A

green butterfly at the top left, next to a loopy black font.
    BUTTERFLY GIRL—A blog about being born again from being born again.
    There’s a picture, and it’s Lauren. It’s Lauren Sullivan without a doubt, and she’s sitting on a bed with her legs crossed, wearing black shorts and a dark blue top—the kind that doesn’t have any sleeves, just thin strips of fabric running over her shoulders. I can see her bra straps peeking out from underneath, too. Black bra straps.
    Lauren’s red hair is blond now, with green streaks in it the color of lime popsicles or Palmolive soap. She’s six years older, but I don’t think she looks it. Weirdly, it’s almost like she looks younger somehow. That’s impossible, I know, but that’s how it seems to me.
    She’s smiling so big. She’s smiling with her entire face. Even her dark brown eyes are smiling.
    Then I’m struck by the realization that I’m smiling, too. Smiling right at her. So big and so wide my cheeks hurt. I put my hands up to my cheeks to make sure. Yes. I’m smiling. Hard.
    I lean back a little in my chair and peek down the hallway toward my parents’ bedroom. I glance up at the ceiling to listen for noises. Nothing. I wait for the right verse to burrow its way into my brain, reminding me I shouldn’t be doing this.
    I can’t hear one single piece of Scripture, just the hum of the computer building up and down over and over again like a heartbeat.
    I shift a bit in the folding chair and lean in toward the light of the screen. I start reading.

 
    7
    Lauren Sullivan is currently working at Clayton Animal Hospital as a vet tech—a job she got since moving back to town. She has two cats named Mitzi and Frankie, and she is a vegan. A vegan, I’ve learned, is someone who doesn’t eat any animals or animal products—not even cheese or eggs.
    Lauren is learning about meditation, which means sitting and emptying your mind of thoughts, but she says she’s not very good at it even though she likes the idea of it. Her favorite singer is a woman named Loretta Lynn and her favorite book is called The Handmaid’s Tale , which, she wrote in one post, “totally and completely and seriously blew my mind.”
    She has two tattoos, one of a butterfly on her shoulder and one of a rainbow on her ankle.
    Since getting these tattoos, I’ve determined they’re sort of clich é , but at the time I swear to you I got them in earnest, I really did. They meant something to me. They meant rebirth in the most earnest, honest way possible and I guess they still do, even though now I think they’re corny.
    That’s what Lauren wrote about her tattoos on her blog, which I sit here reading even though it’s well past midnight. I stare in fascination at the illustrations, amazed that Lauren would choose to do something so permanent to her body. Amazed that she can. She writes so much about her tattoos and her food habits and her favorite things that my eyes dry out trying to read about all of them.
    Hello hello hello dear readers—all fifteen of you—in this post I am going to talk about my very favorite Manic Panic hair colors so get ready because there will be pictures … lots and lots of pictures.
    Okay, so I’ve been wondering a lot about what it means to make the leap from vegetarianism to veganism, and sometimes I feel kind of flipped out that my food issues are just the old part of me looking for some legalistic lifestyle where I feel safe following a Set Of Rules which is sort of why I think sometimes I still eat bacon. To prove to myself that I’m still in charge of me.
    Sometimes I miss the city … I miss the openness and the differences and the way no one knew about my past. But I needed to clear my head and I needed to move on from some of the crap I got sucked into living there so I’m back in my childhood hometown and that is