Read Online Forever for a Year by B. T. Gottfred - Free Book Online

gave a speech about how life is too precious not to believe in your dreams and follow them no matter what. Everyone in our family, and everyone in this town, expected her to become a famous novelist or the first female president, except she wanted to be an actress. She didn’t go to Princeton University, even though her parents wanted her to. Instead she went to New York University and eventually dropped out to move to Los Angeles because she wanted to be a movie star and that’s where people move to become movie stars.
    Nobody has ever told me this, certainly not her, but I think she just assumed she would be this super-famous actress-celebrity right up until she was about twenty-nine. Then, boom, I think she panicked she would never make it, so she found my dad, who was this boring but successful business guy, and she quit acting, got married and pregnant with me before she turned thirty.
    My mom told me the reason she stopped acting was that her first love, before high school, was writing, and she wanted to get back to that. I’ve seen her scribbling in a notebook a bit but she’s never finished anything except a couple short stories that she won’t let me read. So I think my mom tried to kill herself because she knows she failed. She gave this big speech at the end of high school about following your dream, yet she gave up following hers. And knowing that made her want to be dead.
    I will tell you, there is this picture in her senior yearbook that I’ve studied a lot. You should see it. It takes up a whole page when nobody else even got a half of one by themselves. In it she’s reading a book in an empty auditorium, spread over three chairs, her long blond hair all glowing. My mom looks so beautiful. But more than that, she looks like she’s so in control. Anything she wanted, all she had to do was ask and she would get it.
    When I think of that picture, I feel sorry for her. Must be hard to think you can accomplish anything you want and then one day wake up and think you’ll never accomplish anything at all.
    â€œTrevor?” she said, for, like, the twentieth time.
    â€œIt was fine, Mom. It was boring but not too painful.”
    â€œWhat was your favorite class?”
    â€œBiology probably.”
    â€œDid Henry introduce you to his friends?”
    â€œYeah, but Henry and his friends are assholes.”
    â€œDon’t use that word,” she said. Except then she smiled and said, “My brother is an asshole, so you’re probably right about Henry.”
    I smiled too. My mom is the greatest at moments like this. When most adults would keep pretending to be mature and know-it-all, she can let the truth out. For the first time in a long time, and just for a second or two, I felt safe with her.
    By the time we got home, which was only ten minutes later, my mom said she was exhausted and needed to rest. I’m sure she hadn’t been up for more than four hours. But whatever. She asked me to walk down to our neighbor’s to get Lily, which I would’ve wanted to do anyway.
    Except after I started walking, I realized that Lily had two new friends on our block. (She made friends faster than anyone.) So I walked back in to ask my mom which neighbor and she was on the phone in her bedroom. I wanted to yell to interrupt her phone call, but I didn’t. Instead, I got really quiet. I don’t even know why, but I stayed that way and kept inching closer to her bedroom door. That’s when I heard her, very clearly:
    â€œI miss you too.… I can’t visit.… You know I can’t.… Because I need to stay in Chicago with my family … Of course I love them.… It’s different with you.… I have to go.… No, I can’t Skype again.… I have to go.… Bye, Dylan.”
    Then the phone call ended. And I waited. For a couple seconds but it felt longer. Like my whole life just fast-forwarded to the end and then rewound.