Read Online Immaculate by Katelyn Detweiler - Free Book Online Page A

Izzy still said nothing. The silence had seemed best, preferable to confrontation at first, but it was starting to enrage me, scrape at my last bits of patience. Who was she to judge me? I had done nothing wrong, not to her, not to anyone. I didn’t deserve her anger, especially not now, not on top of all the other emotions threatening to tear apart my entire world at the seams.
    â€œSay it, Isabelle,” I said out loud, surprising even myself with the sharpness of my voice. “Say whatever you’re thinking. Let’s just get it over with. In case you didn’t fully realize, I have a lot to deal with at the moment, so let’s get this conversation out of the way. Okay?”
    She breathed in and out, balled her hands into fists, and turned her gaze toward me. For the first time in my life, I didn’t recognize the look I saw in her eyes. I didn’t see my Izzy. Her dark chestnut eyes were so cold and accusing, so hostile.
    â€œFine. You want to know what I’m thinking, Mina? You want to know what I’m
really
thinking?” She was yelling so loud that I worried my parents would hear all the way up at the house. “I think you’re a liar. I think for the first time in your perfect existence, you made a mistake. Mina Dietrich made a massive, ugly, undeniable mistake. And instead of just accepting it and admitting it and handling it like any sane, normal person would do, you’ve decided to make up the most outrageous story I’ve ever heard in my life to cover yourself. I can understand you not wanting other people to know the truth. I get that. But I can’t understand you looking your two best friends in the eye and telling them such a huge fucking lie. I can’t understand, and I won’t understand. You’re so obsessed with being this perfect Mina who everyone expects you to be, but you don’t have to act perfect for us. I don’t care about any of that
Menius
bullshit. I just care about you being
real
.”
    She paused then, her eyes still drilling into mine, willing me to say something for myself. But there was nothing. She was wrong, but I had no way of making her believe that.
    â€œFine then,” she said, pushing herself up off of the blanket. “If you don’t want to make this our problem, you want to keep this to yourself, then great. You handle it. Best of luck, Mina. I’m out of this. Are you staying or leaving with me, Hannah?”
    Izzy had wasted no time in establishing the line, making it clear that there were two very separate, very distinct sides. There was her and there was me. There were the nonbelievers and the believers. There was no middle ground, no space to be found in between.
    â€œI’m staying,” Hannah said. My heart banged against my rib cage, but I resisted the urge to fling my arms around her and hold on for dear life, at least while Izzy was still watching. I may have won the first battle, but I had the feeling that it would be a long, uphill fight.
    Izzy stomped off toward my driveway without another word or a backward glance. I lay down on the blanket, knees tucked into my chest, and rested my head on Hannah’s lap.
    â€œThank you.” I closed my eyes and burrowed more closely against her, breathing in the familiar scent of lavender perfume and plain Dove soap. “Thank you for being here.” She reached down and started stroking my head. We stayed like that for a long time: no talking, no analyzing out loud, just her hand weaving through my knotted hair, her occasional humming mixing with the soft ins and outs of our breathing.
    I was just starting to nod off when Hannah’s cell phone rang, breaking through our temporary peace.
    â€œIt’s my mom,” she said, glancing down at the screen, and I nodded, lifting myself from her lap. While she talked, I busied myself by packing up the food and the plates, accepting the inevitable reentrance into my real life waiting