Read Online Like It Never Happened by Emily Adrian - Free Book Online Page A

pressed against me. I felt his damp T-shirt on my skin. In that moment I could not remember if the pact was important or if it was more of a joke. I tried to weigh it against the urgency of his approaching lips.
    â€œDid you ever think it was an elaborate scheme to get inside your pants?” His breath was hot.
    â€œNo,” I answered honestly.
    I thought of two things before I let Charlie Lamb kiss me.
    I thought of my sister crawling into my bed when I was six years old. Her hair smelled sweet and smoky. She said, “Rebecca, I have discovered the reason for breathing.”
    And I thought of Mr. McFadden, shipping us both off to the most miserable excuse of a performing arts camp.
    I would have to remember to thank him.

CHAPTER 11

    C harlie and I sat together on the bus back to Portland. None of his camp friends happened to be on our bus, but I think he would have sat with me anyway. He seemed somewhat relieved to have finally cut the act. Most counselors sobbed through their farewells, but Charlie doled out hugs with dry eyes. I guess it always feels good to go back to your real life—even if your real life requires playing classical guitar for the elderly, and sometimes retaking calculus exams because you got a ninety-eight percent.
    I kept trying to find the words for the question I needed to ask him, which was something like, “What the hell are we going to tell our friends?” But I couldn’t—partially because Charlie kept kissing me, and partially because I had no idea what I wanted. His lips were all loose and raw with something. Probably not love; it was too early for love. But with enthusiasm, and an obvious willingness.
    As the bus lumbered down the highway, Charlie explored me with his hands. He rubbed circles on my back, and on my neck, and on the corner of my jaw. He dared to splay one hand across my stomach, so that his fingertips pushed against the underwire of my bra. Charlie’s own skin was calloused from a summer-long affair with a canoe. If I closed my eyes, I could easily imagine he was somebody else, somebody older.
    It was occurring to me that Charlie, as a person, wasn’t exactly consistent. For our teachers at Bickford Park he was tirelessly studious; for the bros of summer he was all noise and sportsmanship; for his campers he played the clown. Still, our world onstage meant something to him. The Essential Five meant something to him. Maybe I didn’t trust Charlie, entirely, but I trusted that part of him.
    Now he was searching my back pocket. Paper crinkled.
    â€œWhat’s this?” he whispered.
    Damn. I had forgotten to throw out Mary’s e-mail.
    What really bothered me about it was the reference to my “wild heart.” Like my sister knew me, just because I was sixteen and she had been sixteen once. Like because I was in high school it followed that I was deliberately cruel to everyone, and melodramatic, and prone to collapsing in hallways.
    My sister was not a normal person. By the time she was fourteen she had thrown out all her clothes in favor of one oversized Joy Division T-shirt. By the time she was seventeen she had run away from home. As far as I could tell, she spent the in-between years sneaking out of windows and getting stoned and crying in the shower and screaming at our father.
    When I closed my eyes I could still hear the pitch of her scream, the way you remember an ambulance’s wail. Dad and Mary screamed at each other like howler monkeys, or like people on daytime television. I didn’t know what they were fighting about. I guess it never occurred to me to ask. Even when they weren’t making the windows rattle, the silence between them was loud. At the table in the mornings they braced themselves against their chairs, like they were just hoping to survive each other.
    The night she left home, the screaming woke me up. I crept into the hall and watched them through the rungs of the banister. Mary was sobbing