Read Online Pretty Amy by Lisa Burstein - Free Book Online Page B

handlebars tighter, another trick he used to keep his hands still.
    “I guess.” I was glad we were done. I was afraid that if we kept talking, I might break down and start crying right there on the street. It would have been easy to talk to him like I had when we were who we used to be. When we would hide under his porch with peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwiches and grape-juice boxes. But I didn’t know him anymore. He was a stranger. Like Daniel, like anyone else who was trying to pretend they gave a crap.
    Joe had wanted to keep the old Amy in a little box that he could take out after school and on weekends to be her friend when he was bored. And when that wasn’t good enough for me, I became not good enough for him.
    I stopped and stomped out my cigarette.
    “You should have stayed at the prom.” He shrugged.
    I guess we weren’t done. I guess he was going to try to present his simple Boy Scouts solution to a far more complicated situation. Like he always did.
    “You didn’t let me in, remember? You and your girlfriend .” I wasn’t sure why my voice had such an edge to it. Maybe because I didn’t want to believe the words.
    “Leslie’s not my girlfriend.”
    “Whatever,” I said. I didn’t care if Leslie was his girlfriend. I didn’t care about any of this. I started walking faster. It was stupid. It wasn’t like I could outwalk his bike, but I wanted to get away from him. From everything he made me think about and not want to think about.
    “You still should have stayed,” he said.
    I wondered whether, if he’d known how things would turn out that night, he would have let us stay, even without our sacred tickets. He probably would have, but he didn’t, and he hadn’t, and it was too late now.
    “My mom is even more naggy than usual, so…,” I said, making the international sign for Hurry up .
    “I’m on my way out, anyway,” he said, hopping back on his bike. He took his right hand off the handlebar and shakily saluted me. What he used to do when we were little and he thought I was being bossy.
    I stood there. I didn’t know how to react. If I had been the old me I would have laughed. I would have laughed and he would have laughed . But I was the new me, so I stood there. The street was dark and quiet.
    He pedaled away, the bell on his bike becoming fainter and fainter as his back reflector light got smaller and smaller, like a lens closing, as he made his way down the street.
    …
    I found my mother lying on the couch, waiting up to make sure I came home. Not only because this was what she always did, but because Dick Simon had told her that I couldn’t get in any more trouble, which just gave her another excuse to be a total pain in my ass.
    She was watching David Letterman with one eye open and one eye flat and closed against the pillow. She wore her flannel nightgown even though it was summer. I guess she wanted to look the part for her newly instated nightly vigil. Like some sailor’s wife on a widow’s walk, a lit candle held in her praying hands.
    “How was it?” she asked, sitting up and looking at me. The TV covered her pale pink nightgown and exposed skin with fluorescent blue.
    Freshman year, that used to be a question I could answer, when I went to dances and football games and came home at a decent hour. When I could say Fine and that was all I ever had to say, even if it wasn’t true. It was better than going back over whatever trauma I had suffered. It was easier than saying the real words.
    Not this time.
    “It sucked. I feel like I’m losing ten brain cells for every minute I’m standing behind that counter.”
    “Don’t take this out on me.” She squinted. “Besides, that’s probably less than you were losing when you were spending all your time smoking those doobies.”
    “Great, Mom, perfect. For your information, no one has ‘smoked a doobie’ since 1979.”
    I saw a light flick on behind her eyes, like she’d remembered our appointment with