Read Online Something Wicked by Lesley Anne Cowan - Free Book Online Page A

stand it any longer.
    After that, sometimes we’d order a pizza. Or sometimes we’d play Scrabble, and I’d joke how it made me feel a million years old, until I started to kick his ass at it. Sometimes we’d be silly. I’d play tic-tac-toe with a pen on his stomach. Or he’d try to balance a pepperoni slice on my nose. But most of the time we just talked about stuff like our childhoods and friends andparents. And about heavy shit. Like him having to deal with his mother, who has an eating disorder and was hospitalized. Or his depression, which forced him to drop out of university. Or about my father, who left my mom when I was small, and how I wasn’t interested in finding him because I knew it would only be a disappointment.
    “Are you sure?” he asked.
    I searched my head, thinking about his question. “Yeah. I know that’s not an exciting answer. But it’s like, ‘Fuck you.’ You know? What am I going to do, ruin my life because he’s a loser?”
    “Sometimes I’m amazed you’re only sixteen.”
    “Just turned …” I reminded him.
    “Well, anyway. You’ve lived a lot of life already.”
    “How come you’re the only one who thinks that I’m amazing?”
    His answer was to pull me closer. Which was the perfect response, because sometimes words aren’t the best way to answer a question.
    And I’d wished I could stay there forever. On that bed. In those sheets. In that summer. I wished that I could just lie there in my underwear and play silly games and bare my honest soul to someone. But eventually and always, I had to get dressed. And with each piece of clothing, I felt myself disappear under the layers.
    Socks / daughter.
    Shirt / whore.
    Jeans / student.
    Hoodie / friend.
    Studded belt / bitch.

Fifeen
    Michael made me a different person. He made me want to be a better person. Sometimes I’m embarrassed at how stupid I was with him. I used to make him greeting cards out of construction paper and glue on ribbons. And I cried in front of him all the time. About nothing. It was like I was my mother. I’d just come through the door and fall into the cushy couch and bawl while he’d get me some juice and whatever food he had around. Then he’d sit beside me, pull me close to him, and just rub the back of my head. And when I finally stopped my blubbering and was calm enough to tell him what was wrong, I couldn’t think of anything to say because my words would have sounded so dumb by that point: Ally was being a bitch, I failed a science exam, my mom got drunk last night. Big deal.
    Usually I’d start to tell him all this but then, in the middle of it, I’d just start laughing at my own pathetic self, and he’d start laughing and then we’d kiss, and my mouth would be on his, sucking in his happiness like he was some kind of helium making me light again.
    Even my voice would get all squeaky and high-pitched, and I’d giggle like a little girl.

    “I just don’t get how he could leave me,” I tell Jess over the phone after going over it for the millionth time.
    “Don’t be a stupid idiot,” she comforts me. “You are twelve years younger than him. He couldn’t take it, Melissa. The fact that he left you proves he loved you. It was too much for him. If he didn’t love you, he would have stuck around and just duped you. You see? He had to leave. Put a barrier between your love. It’s so romantic, really.”
    “Yeah, tragic.”
    “Yeah. Tragic. Anyway, he’ll probably come back,” Jess speculates. “He’s probably just confused. You guys were really in love.”
    I want to believe what she says, because of all my friends, Jess knows the most about love. She has a good boyfriend. She and Devon have been together for eight months and they’ve never had a fight. But that’s because he’s so dull he could never bring his heart rate up high enough to get upset about anything.

    I call Ally next. Big mistake.
    “You need to forget about him,” she blurts out, and then puts me on